AFTER TWENTY YEARS 




MIDDLETON 




Class 
Book 



J-LM 






iopightN . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



AFTER TWENTY 
YEARS 

A Dissertation on the Philosophy 
of Life in Narrative Form 




BY 

GEO. W. MIDDLETON, M.D. 



PRESS OF THE DESERET NEWS 
Salt Lake City, Dec. 10. 1914 






Copyright, 1914, 
By George W. Middleton. 



JAN 12 1315 



A 3 9 1 4 6 3 



*M> I 



THE purpose of this volume is to discuss the 
philosophy of life in a concrete way, avoid- 
ing as I hope the tediousness that must attach to 
dissertations on honesty and charity and courage 
and the many virtues and vices of society when pre- 
sented in the abstract. 

An attempt has been made to weave into the warp 
of narrative my woof of philosophy, with what suc- 
cess I must leave the reader to judge. 

The question naturally arises, Are these real char- 
acters, and the answer is that in the main they are. 
I have reserved the right, however, to vary my 
colors and to modify my pattern according to my 
own design. 

Since my temporary residence has been in many 
different places, it is not to be presumed that all the 
subject matter was collected in any one geographical 
location. 

The objection will be raised that it is a patchwork, 
and I plead guilty to the charge. I hope, however, 
that the colors have been painted with sufficient 
iii 



PREFACE 

vividness to compensate for the lack of solidarity 
which must appear. 

To my friends I wish to say, Read it critically, and 
see if you do not discover at least some fragment of 
yourself in the pattern. Our conception of life is a 
component thing, reflecting something of every per- 
son we have known, and holding out certain ideals 
which transcend all personality. 

If, therefore, the reader has been my friend or my 
enemy, he will find himself mixed up to a certain 
greater or less extent in the character colors which 
I have tried to work into the pattern. 

I make my appeal especially to young people, who 
have the problems of life all unsolved before them, 
and trust that I may shed some light upon those 
shaded sections of the pathway of life where we 
grope in the darkness and apprehend blindly. 

I have attempted to make my climax come in the 
dissertation on religion and philosophy, in which I 
have tried to steer clear of all tradition and of con- 
ventional forms, and to look at the momentous prob- 
lems involved purely from the rational viewpoint. 

I do not mean by this that there is nothing in 
tradition, but that I chose to put forth an entirely 
different line of argument for the proof of Deity 
and the hope of immortality. 

iv 



PREFACE 

If there is anything which I have said unwittingly, 
which might be offensive to any of my readers, I 
beg them to read the text again and see if it is not 
the other fellow aimed at. We often take things to 
ourselves which were never intended for us at all. 
In advance I humbly crave the pardon of anybody 
who might find occasion for offense, because nothing 
is meant to cast any reflection on any living person. 

I commend myself to the charity of my readers, 
trusting that they will pardon my weak points and 
find some satisfaction in the viewpoint of life which 
has come to me after much thought and reflection. 

I am indebted very much to my esteemed friend 
Prof. John Henry Evans for suggestions as to ar- 
rangement of materials, and for many corrections of 
syntax and form which he has made. The editing 
has been entirely under his direction. 

To my many friends : I thank you all for the con- 
tributions you have unwittingly made in conversa- 
tion and in the display of all those little nameless 
courtesies of life which are hereby acknowledged 
with due appreciation. 

G. W. M. 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
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CONTENTS 

I. The Petals of the Daisy 1 

II. The Village Butterfly 12 

III. The Man Who Never Had a Chance. . 21 

IV. The Easiest Way 33 

V. Rags on the Family Tree 50 

VI. The Greater Satisfaction 79 

VII. A Stone which' the Builders Rejected 109 

VIII. The Winner of Real Victories 133 

IX. Satellites and Luminaries 173 

X. The Years that bring Wisdom 200 

XI. On the Anvil of Thought 239 

XII. Retrospective 286 



vn 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 



CHAPTER I 

THE PETALS OF THE DAISY. 

AM in the mood of memories today. The great 
record of the past has opened its pages before 
me. Recollection is throwing its pictures upon the 
mental screen, and bringing out some with a clear- 
ness that transcends all the rest. 

It is a strange thing how the incidents of life fix 
themselves in our memory as permanent assets or 
deficits. Some things that seemed to loom so big 
that they occupied our whole attention and were 
for the time being the only things in the world are 
now blotted out completely from the page and come 
back to us from the tradition of others as alien 
experiences, which we look upon as disinterested 
spectators and do not recognize as a part, at one 
time a most important part, of our own biography. 

Then there are other things so trivial, so devoid 
1 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

of interest or value to us now that we would gladly 
discard them as rubbish, but they cling to us and 
will not be cast out. 

The casket of memory has a wonderful and 
varied stock of fragments of things — of stories half 
told, of comedies, of tragedies, of pages gilded with 
romance and painted with the colors of the morning, 
of sheets blotted and marred by crime, and black 
and grimy with the record of life's mistakes, and 
life's mischances. It has fragments of shafts of 
envy that were hurled at our unoffending heads. It 
has tokens of love and respect that brought gladness 
and faith into our life, and gave us courage to fight 
on, and to keep up the struggle. It has pictures of 
faces that have faded out of our life in the long 
distant past. It has trinkets and locks of hair that 
hark back to the land of the departed. 

And how well its contents are preserved from the 
ravages of time ! The flowers which came to me 
as the messenger of a friend's esteem were beautiful 
to behold as they reflected the colors of the rainbow 
from their gorgeous petals and filled the air with 
their scented breath. Ephemeral delights ! In a few 
brief hours they were all withered and their mes- 
sage of sentiment completely blotted out. But in the 
casket of memory they are imperishable. They 

2 



THE PETALS OF THE DAISY 

shine with all the lustre of their pristine days, and 
glisten with the morning dew as when they first 
unfolded their mysterious forms, and opened their 
gaudy faces to greet the awakening sun. 

As the memory pictures are thrown one by one 
upon the screen, I select from among the number, 
perhaps the most vivid, at any rate the most inter- 
esting in its far-reaching outgrowth of the score 
and more of years that have touched its component 
parts as with a magician's wand and transformed 
some of them into gold dust and some of them into 
rust, and some of them into black spots that mar 
and deface the screen. 

It is the picture of a group of happy children 
playing in a meadow in a summer morning long, 
long ago. The sun is pouring its golden glory over 
the eastern hills, and the birds are filling the air with 
liquid melody. Dew drops are hanging like pol- 
ished diamonds from every green leaf and from 
every gorgeous petal. 

How like a scene from the land of fairies was 
this glorious morning landscape, as the children 
gamboled and played ! 

Once only in life can we shake off the dross of 
the world, and feel the true relationship between 
heaven and earth ! But when the gates that have 

3 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

been left ajar are closed behind us, and we go out 
of the land of the spirit into the domain of material 
things, the dream of heaven is left behind. Some- 
times its echoes reverberate from the land of slum- 
ber, and break in upon our night visions and some- 
times in day dreams the message comes again. But 
it is capricious, and its beautiful melody is drowned 
in the discordant noises of the world. When we 
have known the satiety of the temporal life and 
perceived the gossamer texture of the mundane web, 
what would we not give for a look through the 
pearly gates which were open to us when our young 
life still lingered on the threshold? But we must 
be content to walk by faith and not by actual knowl- 
edge, until the veil shall have been raised again 
and the haze lifted that has rested all these years 
over our comprehension. 

This happy group of children are playing the old 
game of fortune with the wild daisies from the 
meadow. They are plucking the petals one by one, 
and repeating the old familiar rhyme, "A rich man, 
a poor man, a beggar man, a thief," etc., with the 
idea that the name corresponding to the last petal 
should indicate the station in life that Fate has in 
store for them. 

How natural it was in those unreasoning days to 
4 



THE PETALS OF THE DAISY 

connect things as cause and effect that have no 
bearing upon one another! Because this tangible 
thing that has a material basis is true, this other in- 
tangible thing of the mental or spiritual basis must 
be true also, even though there is nothing in the 
circumstance or the constitution of things to cor- 
relate them. Even the mature mind does not wholly 
divest itself of this fallacious method of reasoning. 
It is the old proposition of proving that three is 
greater than ten by turning a stick into a serpent. 

When we look over the record of that great strug- 
gle of humanity for knowledge of Deity and destiny 
which began with the dawn of consciousness, we 
are amazed to find how very much of the time and 
energy of the world have been expended to estab- 
lish the correlation of sequence in events and things 
which in their nature are entirely distinct and sep- 
arate. 

The eagerness of the child for knowledge of the 
future — for some token from the land of possibili- 
ties, for some foretaste of the satisfaction of con- 
quest or dominion, — is but the same thing as the 
eagerness of the adult mind, perceiving the evanes- 
ence of worldly things, for some foretaste of the 
more enduring things of his spiritual inheritance. 
And as the child consults the necromancer, the 

5 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

phrenologist, the Gypsy fortune-teller, and even the 
daisy's petals for an answer to his eager question, 
"What is my lot to be?" so the adult mind all 
through the world's history has been wont to consult 
the spiritual necromancer, and to accept as gospel 
truth the evasive answer which too often has taken 
advantage of his childish credulity. 

It is a lie, a falsehood ! The story of the daisy's 
petals is not true, as the future pages of this little 
book are to show. 

The eternal chancellors of God are Cause and 
Effect. These only are the factors that are to de- 
termine our destiny. You may ask the sphinx of 
the future by way of his high priest the necroman- 
cer to reveal to you, the unwritten chapters of your 
life, and the only true answer that you will get back 
is the answer that shall come of your own life's 
effort. When God gave you your free agency and 
entrusted you with the responsibility of your own 
destiny, He did not intend to prop you up at every 
turn by Providential intervention, to correct your 
errors and commend you at once for your virtues. 
Freedom of will was given you that you might de- 
velop character. No man ever grows in power only 
as he develops initiative. God gives you the oppor- 
tunity, but he will not thrust advantage upon you. 

6 



THE PETALS OF THE DAISY 

So when men and women are seeking to bolster 
themselves up by some extraneous force which is 
not a part of their own constitution, they are trying 
to shirk the responsibility that God has placed upon 
them. 

One of the most interesting studies in the world 
is to watch the careers of those who have been the 
friends of our childhood, to see how they acquitted 
themselves when they got out of the play world and 
were confronted with the really serious problems 
of life. How interesting and profitable to turn the 
kaleidoscope of time round by decades to see the 
new arrangement that has come ! If we could have 
but looked into the future when we stood at the 
threshold of life where everything was tinted with 
rainbow colors, and every boy and girl seemed to 
have their future fixed by the circumstances in which 
we found them, what a paradoxical thing the next 
score of years would have presented to us ! In our 
childish imagination we gave first rank to the dandy 
who dressed well and danced well and walked with 
a swagger. How many dandies we have seen go the 
way of the world and seek their level at the lowest 
stratum of the social scale, and how many uncouth 
boys from the country farm have we seen work 
their way to the very first rank of society and stand 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

pre-eminent as professional men, as financiers, as 
educators ! 

It was our inexperience that illuded us. If we 
could have been endowed with our present knowl- 
edge of life, we could have put a proper value upon 
them. From the arc that appeared we could have 
caluculated the whole circle. For the underlying 
principles of success or failure are as precise, and 
the deductions that can be drawn from them as ac- 
curate, as the principles of geometry. 

As we look back over the vista of the years, the 
first startling fact that confronts us is the number 
of our friends who have been gathered in by the 
grim reaper. As children we watched the sparks 
of burning soot on the back of the chimney and 
imagined they were contending armies in deadly 
conflict. Each instant, in the twinkling of an eye, 
a soldier went to his doom, and the ranks were 
filled by others eager for the fight. The iron hand 
of Fate has dealt just so with our friends. 

The inventory of our friends of twenty years ago 
presents some wonderful transformations. Some 
have lived a life of resistance and placed themselves 
counter to the world and the people of the world, 
and when fortune knocked at their door they have 
sternly refused to admit her. Some have adapted 

8 



THE PETALS OF THE DAISY 

themselves readily into the circumstances in which 
they found themselves, and prospered in the things 
of the world and flourished in friendship. It is a 
great relief to meet one such, who has faith in him- 
self and believes in the eternal fitness of things. 
Some have drifted from their spiritual moorings and 
foundered on the rocks of modern speculation. Of 
the controversy in their minds which ended in the 
shipwreck of their faith, there is more to be said 
in the pages of this book. Some have acquitted 
themselves as men and women of character and 
taken definite stands on every issue that confronted 
them. Some have moved along the lines of least 
resistance and responded to one single impelling 
motive, their unrestrained desire. Like rudderless 
ships they have been subject to the caprice of all 
the winds, with no chart nor compass to guide them. 
Some have grown thin and nervous ; some have 
grown fat and contented. 

I am standing at the end of twenty years that have 
swept over the group of boys and girls who were 
my schoolmates and playmates. The years have 
flown so swiftly by that one gasps to think of the 
changes they have wrought. When I see how the 
etching process of the years has marked deep fur- 
rows in the forehead of my friends, and sifted the 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

frosts of early autumn among the golden tresses, I 
become aware of the fact that I am subjected to the 
same process, and must change as they are chang- 
ing, and as all the world is changing around us. 
For life and the world and the universe are all un- 
stable things, transforming themselves each year, 
each decade, each century into new unprecedented 
forms, developing, evolving, receding. We know 
that we are in a great process that must have some 
beneficent ending, we know there must be some 
goal toward which all things are converging ; but we 
are like the mote upon the sunbeam, we can see 
neither the source nor the terminus of the light that 
illuminates us. For God has seen fit to safeguard 
His secrets by covering them up with mysteries un- 
fathomable. We must content ourselves for the 
time being with the knowledge that life is, and trust 
the explanation of it to that future time which we 
see by the eye of faith, when the mists shall have 
rolled away, and the great plan that correlates life 
and death and the world and the universe shall 
stand revealed. We must act on the presumption 
that there is such a plan, for any other hypothesis 
would be inconsistent with reason. 

And now to my task of following the life story of 
the group of happy children we saw playing upon 

10 



THE PETALS OF THE DAISY 

the meadow. I shall call the roll only as I wish 
each one to appear on the stage of action. I shall 
avoid the dialogue form of narrative because it has 
been so universally used that I imagine a rest from 
it may meet the approval of my readers. 



11 



CHAPTER II 



THE VILLAGE BUTTERFLY 



I SELECT at random a little girl whom for con- 
venience we shall call Harriet. She is one of na- 
ture's favorites. She has golden locks and blue 
eyes and a smile that captivates every one who comes 
within the range of its' irresistible charm. She was 
much patronized and petted. It seemed to her that 
she was born with the queenly prerogative and that 
all people were born to be her obedient subjects. 
She measured the world by her little sphere of 
action, and she did not comprehend that with all her 
charms she was only an untutored child of the vil- 
lage and that her glory would vanish in an instant if 
she were dislodged from her primitive setting. 

How kind it is of Mother Nature to surround our 
blissful self-satisfaction with a Chinese wall of 
ignorance to prevent us from learning the insignifi- 
cant role the best of us are to play in the great 
drama of life! 

Our little Harriet grew with the ebb and flow of 
12 



THE VILLAGE BUTTERFLY 

the seasons, and began to feel the emotions and 
dream the dreams of budding womanhood. The 
peach bloom of her native heath had incorporated 
its gorgeous coloring into the pigment of her cheeks, 
and the sunbeams had entangled themselves among 
her golden tresses. Grace of motion and music of 
voice came with the womanly development. Nature 
poured out her bounties unstinted over the head of 
this untutored child and made her the pride of the 
village, the coveted object of many a masculine 
desire. 

There is a deep, a profound meaning in this lan- 
guage of nature interpreted in fine femininity, be 
it the endowment of the peasant or of the princess. 
When the hour of its glory has come, the rose opens 
its gorgeous face to the morning sun, and freights 
the breeze with its scented breath. It invokes the 
occult chemistry of nature to extract from the dull 
clod of earth ambrosial nectars for the bee and fra- 
grance for the passing stranger. It borrows the 
most gorgeous colors to adorn itself. It looks with 
derision at the artist and the sculptor in their vain at- 
tempts to imitate its perfect contour, as it sways with 
the breezes of the spring time. 

And all this because it has a message to deliver, 
13 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

a divine function to fulfill. It must purchase the 
aid of the insect to send its love message to its kin- 
dred rose upon another stem. It must put the su- 
preme effort of its life into this love story, that 
others of its kind may live, that its name and gen- 
eration may be perpetuated, and that its delight 
may not vanish from the earth, but that it may aug- 
ment as the generations come and go. 

And this is the language of nature to you, my 
maiden friend. This is the meaning of the peach 
blossom upon your cheek, of the golden glory that 
adorns your head. This is the divine motion that 
is stirring within you. It is your privilege, it is your 
prerogative, it is your bounden duty to claim your 
birthright, to borrow the colors of the autumn forest 
to adorn yourself, to invoke the Muses for their aid, 
to appropriate all that art has got to embellish na- 
ture, that your love message may be directed to one 
worthy to receive it, that the greatest of all your 
contributions to the world may not be of an inferior 
kind, that your generation may be a unit in an 
ascending scale of intellect and soul, that the social 
and intellectual arc which you have subtended may 
be widened and expanded by those who are to follow 
you. 

And now we find our charming little Harriet 
14 



THE VILLAGE BUTTERFLY 

standing at the threshold of womanhood, with all 
the emotions and instincts of that wondrous epoch 
vibrating within her. Little does she know the 
meaning of that hidden language of nature, which 
speaks in eloquent words from the rosy cheek, from 
the graceful contour of her form. What wonder if 
she is sometimes proud and disdainful ! The hom- 
age of the country swain seems naturally to her, in 
her meagre experience, to be an indicator of the 
estimate the world has put upon her. She seems to 
reign as a queen with all her willing subjects at her 
feet ready to do homage. 

The most autocratic, aristocratic person on the 
face of the earth is the belle of a country town, as 
the young man who has experienced her disdain can 
well attest. But we can pardon that vanity when 
we get the perspective of the years, and the larger 
outlook on life that comes with our widening circle 
of acquaintance. We can see now, as she also can 
see, how the glory of the country belle would vanish 
in a moment if she were transplanted from her rural 
setting into the polished life and be estimated by the 
fine social requirements of her sisters of the city. 

Make the most then of your hour of glory, my little 
disdainful friend. You are like a butterfly upon the 
wing, but one day the gorgeous many-colored wings 

15 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

you are disporting will be withered and useless, and 
you will come down to the level of other mortals, 
perhaps to crawl as a dull grub, with nothing but 
the memory of your superlative hour to console you ! 
We will pardon your pride, and think charitably of 
your disdain. Perhaps you did better than any 
other mortal would have done under the same cir- 
cumstances. 

The suitors of our little Harriet are all the swains 
of the village, and she is permitted to take her 
choice, for any one of them would count himself 
most lucky to receive the least indication that his 
advances were approved. Which shall it be? God 
help her to decide that question, which has held in 
its answer the happiness or the misery of so many 
untold thousands of souls. It is ordinarily a game 
of blind man's buff, in which we grope in the dark 
and apprehend without seeing. It is a lottery in 
which are many blanks and only a few real 
prizes. 

Which of all these young men are to be winners 
in the game of life, and which are destined to recede 
and go down to ignominious defeat? The pages 
of this little book, I hope, will be an aid to all those 
who are hanging uncertain on this momentous prob- 
lem. That old scripture which says the last shall 

16 



THE VILLAGE BUTTERFLY 

be first and the first shall be last is wonderfully 
true of life. But how is the girl emerging from 
her 'teens to analyze the method of life of each in- 
dividual suitor and choose the winner from among 
the group? 

This matter of the choice of a life's companion is 
one that is looked upon with altogether too much 
levity. The preliminary negotiations which lead up 
to this most serious step in life are regarded too 
often as a joke. When a young man begins to call 
on a young lady he thus furnishes for his friends and 
for her friends a capital occasion for jesting. The 
social circle to which they belong look upon it with 
lightness, and lose no occasion to make them the sub- 
ject of such witticisms as they can invent. 

But to the young people themselves, who stand 
breathless on the threshold of this new phase of 
life, it is the one great event, which overshadows all 
the other affairs of their life. If we buy mer- 
chandise and discover that we have made a mistake, 
we can in time repair our fortune; and often the 
experience gained is a more valuable asset in our 
life than the commodity would have been. But woe 
be to the man or the woman who makes a bad bar- 
gain in the matrimonial market. It were better that 
a millstone were tied around their neck and that they 

17 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

were cast into the sea. Every day we see matri- 
monial barks foundering on the shoals of circum- 
stance, because the partners to the venture were not 
properly matched. If we had some means of test- 
ing the condition affinity as we test the electric po- 
tential of certain objects with the galvanometer, our 
mating for life would be a more simple problem. 
In this matter we are ruled too much by emotion and 
not enough by reason. The one objection to young 
marriages is that the choice is made before judg- 
ment has developed sufficiently to weigh the conse- 
quences. 

It is only fair to say on the other hand that the 
plasticity of youth may enable people to mold their 
temperament into harmony, and whether by intuition 
or by chance or by Providence, young marriages 
often turn out to be satisfactory. 

To young people who aim at education, or train- 
ing for a profession, marriage should be postponed 
until the preparatory work is consummated, so that 
they begin life as producers, and not as dead weights 
retarding their own progress. How often do we see 
young people subjecting themselves to all kinds of 
privations and hardships in their college work, and 
destroying all the romance and poetry of their early 
married life in the struggle, when they could have 

18 



THE VILLAGE BUTTERFLY 

avoided it by postponing the wedding day until 
after the college work was completed ! 

The prevalent modern idea which represents the 
other extreme of the proposition, that young people 
should not get married until they can afford to live 
in high style and indulge themselves in all the lux- 
uries of well-to-do people, I believe to be equally 
wrong. If they are ready to enter the lists as pro- 
ducers, independent of other people, they can afford 
to make the struggle together, and the training that 
results from the self-denial they are obliged to ex- 
ercise will be a great asset in their lives in the after 
years. 

To each individual the plan of his life is the most 
serious thing that confronts him. We are largely 
the sculptors of our own character. We ought at 
least to try to put as much brains into the serious 
problems that pertain to our happiness for all time 
as we would in decisions that have commercial value 
for their issue. We ought to develop the philosophy 
of living, and in all our social arrangements be gov- 
erned by reason and not by passion. And when we 
approach the problem of the choice of a life's com- 
panion we should be sure that we have weighed 
carefully all the consequences, and acted up to the 
very best judgment we are capable of. 

19 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

And this was the problem before our winsome 
little Harriet as she stood at the end of her 'teens, 
and indulged in the gossamer dreams of maiden- 
hood. Without much careful consideration, I fear, 
she faced the hazard of fate and made her choice, 
and cast her lot for better or for worse with one 
whom for convenience we will call Henry, as we 
review his outlook on life and follow his conclusions 
to their ultimate consequences. 



20 



CHAPTER III 

THE MAN WHO NEVER HAD A CHANCE 

LIKE many other young men of his kind Henry 
was wont to attach much importance to his 
personal appearance, and after the crude method of 
his native town, he dressed the best and danced the 
best of the boys in his circle. He believed that edu- 
cation is a thing limited by nature to certain types of 
people, and as he did not belong to that particular 
class, books could be of no value to him. It was his 
opinion that each individual in this world is born to 
a certain station in life, and that if one is educated 
out of his station he will be discontented and un- 
happy. He rather prided himself on being ignorant 
of the lore of books and sometimes boasted about it. 

Having no regular profession or trade he was 
obliged to seek employment at one thing and an- 
other, as opportunities presented themselves, and 
often the earnings of one job were all consumed 
before he got another. 

Any young lady in choosing her life's companion, 
who thinks that happiness is going to abide in homes 
of poverty will find herself in general mistaken. 
21 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

When the wolf comes in at the door, the angel of 
love goes out at the chimney. There is much prac- 
tical sense in the question propounded by the young 
woman of the lower class of England, when a young 
man comes wooing, "How many shillings a week 
does he have?" No young man is a fit subject for 
the matrimonial market the product of whose toil is 
not sufficient to keep the wife and the children who 
are to depend on him from being paupers. 

Our poor Henry drifted along from one thing to 
another. Each year found him more circumscribed 
than the one before. His life was like a spiral each 
circle of which diminishes in circumference regu- 
larly toward a vanishing point. He became pessim- 
istic, and railed against fate. He blamed everybody 
but himself for the hard luck which seemed always 
to be his lot. 

Whenever you see a man with a hard luck story, 
you can always find the explanation of his condition 
in the method of his life. But these hard luck fel- 
lows can never see the fault in themselves. They 
will blame everything and everybody, but never think 
of blaming themselves. They think the world is in 
a conspiracy against them. With covetous eyes they 
look at the possessions of other people and attribute 
all kinds of unholy motives and methods to the one 
22 



HE NEVER HAD A CHANCE 

who succeeds. They always think they never had 
a chance in the world ; that fate is deliberately hold- 
ing them down ; that society is organized for the 
express purpose of thwarting and defeating them. 

So our Henry joined the rank of the pessimists, 
and got much satisfaction out of telling how this 
and that prominent man had gone the way of in- 
iquity. 

Our Harriet and Henry pulled along indifferently 
as the years added to their problem hungry mouths 
to feed and shoes and clothing to be purchased for 
the multitudinous progeny that followed in their 
wake. All the poetry and sentiment had gone out 
of their lives, and the experiences of each day were 
chapters most tedious and prosaic. 

And now, my young lady friends, I want to tell 
you a secret that many women never learn. When 
the fine sentiment of budding and maturing woman- 
hood was with you, you borrowed the colors of 
the rainbow to adorn yourself, and studiously 
adopted every little amenity of life you knew 
about. You studied by day and by night the method 
of making yourself most attractive, because you 
wished to gain the favor of young men in general 
and of one young man in particular. When she has 
attained the end desired, the average woman folds 

23 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

up the tinsel and the feathers, and allows the fine 
gowns to become seedy and moth eaten. She sheds 
off the poetry and sentiment of her life as the rose- 
bush sheds its gorgeous colored petals and its green 
leaves in preparation for the winter sleep, and re- 
tains only the dry branches, sometimes with thorns 
but poorly concealed. And when she goes to the 
ball or sociable, she thinks that society is conspiring 
against her because she is not sought out and pat- 
ronized as she used to be. She does not reason that 
bees abandon the most gorgeous flower when the 
honey is all exhausted and the corolla begins to fade. 
She is trying to make water run up hill. And the 
man who was attracted by her charms and cast his 
lot with her has not the same zest as he used to have, 
and she thinks he has gone wrong and is neglecting 
his connubial duties. 

Sometimes it is listlessness that causes women to 
go this way; sometimes it is unselfishness — the 
struggle to bestow comfort on her family rising to 
be the dominant factor in her life ; sometimes it is 
the fault of others. But whatever the cause, it is 
wrong in principle. If the adoption of taste in dress 
and all the little amenities of life which give the 
charm to womanhood were necessary to fix the 
young man's attention before marriage the same 

24 



HE NEVER HAD A CHANCE 

principle holds true, with emphasis, after marriage. 
For the association which was only occasional has 
become constant, and the wish to be pleased has not 
diminished any by the change. 

Thanks to the keener sense of life's proprieties 
possessed by the best type of our fine womanhood, 
I am not including all women in this category. I 
have described the method, I hope, of only a small 
minority, which shall be still more diminished as our 
more liberal education develops the idea of sex 
equality. When a woman learns to carry the charm 
of her youth into the struggle of all the years, it 
seems to me that she has found the true philosophy 
of life. The mission of woman is to preach the 
gospel of optimism and faith both by precept and 
example. But if she forsakes her birthright, and 
joins the ranks of the pessimists, and defies the laws 
of nature, she voluntarily abdicates the throne which 
society in all times and all places has accorded her 
the right to occupy. 

And when men grow indifferent in the same way, 
and allow their clothing to grow seedy and their 
beards to grow long, and all the sentiment to go out 
of their life, they are flying in the face of a great 
social law, and they will have to pay the penalty, for 
the law of attraction and repulsion is as certain in 

OK 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

its application, as inexorable in its demands, as the 
law of gravitation. 

And this was the fate of the young people we are 
describing. Only a few years and all the poetry 
and sentiment were gone, and the dull, tedious prose 
of each day added chapter after chapter to the 
meaningless record of their wasted lives. 

Once the author of these memoirs was called pro- 
fessionally into their meagre home. A little un- 
fortunate child lay at the point of death, and the 
mutual solicitude had momentarily spanned the great 
gulf that had opened between them. 

These terrible death-bed tragedies that oftentimes 
come into our homes have the compensation that 
they bring a revivifying of faith and of all the better 
attributes of the soul. The dying child is an angel 
messenger, delivering back some of the glory of 
heaven before it bids its final adieu. In that hour of 
darkest trial and keenest suffering are born courage 
and resolution and faith. If we have strength of 
character, these will be permanent assets, but if we 
are weak, they will be but transitory emotions, sur- 
viving only while the broken sod keeps fresh the 
memory of our treasure who slumbers beneath the 
sanctified mound. And this home of squalor was 
glorious for a time with faith and resolution. But 

26 



HE NEVER HAD A CHANCE 

the dream of heaven was brief, and the old habitual 
groveling spirit came back again. 

They showed me a picture taken on their wed- 
ding day — the bride with her orange blossoms and 
her fine array, and the groom in princely attire sit- 
ting manfully by her side. How proud they must 
have been of each other on that eventful day, arid 
what dreams they must have had of the unfolding 
events of their opening career ! If they could have 
had a vision of this desolation of a home as I saw it, 
I wonder if they could have endured the sight. 

In the air castles they built, in the successes they 
anticipated, two important factors had been left out 
of their calculations. The transcendent importance 
of industry and of frugality had never dawned upon 
them. 

The world has not much to bestow upon the man 
who will not work. It is the get-up-and-get that 
makes men great. Go to the home of the successful 
farmer and you will find the dews of the morning 
upon his rugged brow. You will see the last glim- 
mer of evening's twilight fall upon him as he still 
bends over his unfinished task. Go to the home of 
the scholar and you will find him pouring over his 
books in the silent hours of the night when all the 
world besides is hushed in slumber. For God has 
27 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

set a price upon everything in this world that is 
worth having, and he who would possess must pay 
the price of the thing he covets. 

Again, the importance of frugality as a factor of 
success cannot be overestimated. If your compen- 
sation is a dollar a day, and you live on seventy-five 
cents a day, your credit will gradually grow as the 
balance of each day is added to your possessions. 
But if with an income of a dollar a day your ex- 
penditure is a dollar and a quarter a day, you will 
as certainly come to discredit as the night will follow 
the day. Nature deals with us justly but not mer- 
cifully. She makes cold mathematical deductions in 
her verdicts. She balances the ledger with unerring 
accuracy, and announces the verdict at the close of 
every day. She fixes our credit among men by 
these daily bulletins, and whether we will or not, 
we must submit to the rating she puts upon us. 

Our friends had failed to comprehend the value 
of these fundamental principles of life. By slothful- 
ness and waste they had reduced their possessions to 
the meagre equipment of a mean home where years 
of drudgery were endured without a hope of better 
days. 

One would have thought that such an inheritance 
of such a home with all its perversion of sanity of 

28 



HE NEVER HAD A CHANCE 

life would represent the greatest misfortune that 
could come to the children who swarmed like ants 
around the meagre shack which was supposed to 
shelter them. One asks in the sight of God and 
men if it is really the right thing to bring into the 
world such a horde of unfit human beings, each one 
cf whom adds to the importunities of all the rest. 
No inspired writer nor philosophical teacher has 
dared to dwell upon this vital social problem. 

It is a strange thing in life that we are permitted 
by social usage freely to discuss and without hin- 
drance to advocate almost everything that pertains 
to the material welfare of the human race. But the 
one most fundamental of all things, the reproduction 
of human beings, has been so hedged about by tradi- 
tion that we have not dared to deal with its problems 
in a scientific way, and to offer suggestions for im- 
provement. 

It is a good augur for the future that the dim 
outlines of a science called eugenics have begun to 
take form. But the disciples of this new faith are 
as yet so modest and fearful of consequences that 
they make very few positive statements and hardly 
dare to advocate their principles for practical appli- 
cation. 

And so the substance of the world continues to 
29 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

be eaten up by an inferior breed, which often by the 
haphazard method we are following continues to 
deteriorate, while the best elements of our race 
physically and intellectually are shirking this re- 
sponsibility of reproducing their kind. If any drover 
adopted such methods in breeding horses and cattle 
he would most assuredly make a failure. 

When we can break over the traditional barriers 
and give as much thought to the welfare of the 
human race as we do to horses and cattle, we shall 
take a great stride forward in our civilization. Com- 
pared with the dark ages we may consider ourselve.-. 
highly civilized, but compared with the possibilities 
easily within our reach we are barbarians. 

For this unfortunate family whose experiences we 
have been detailing, there yet remained one calamity 
which was to cap the climax. Wearied with the 
hardship and toil and the disappointing circum- 
stances of her life, the mother fell sick and died. 
The meagre comforts which she had managed to 
maintain were taken away, and the unfortunate chil- 
dren were left to the chance assistance of charitable 
friends, and the poor assistance they could bestow 
on one another. 

It is hard to see Providence in such an occurrence, 
and yet we may judge wrongly by seeing only part 

30 



HE NEVER HAD A CHANCE 

of the picture. The cruel things in this world may 
have their counterpart in blessings hereafter, but the 
remote compensation does not altogether satisfy our 
mind. We wish to see justice and mercy put into 
action immediately. But the way of nature is one 
of postponement. We desire to see all people 
happy, but it is the decree of nature that many 
should suffer. Some time, some where, there must 
be a compensation, or the basis of this whole world 
fabric would be injustice and cruelty. We must 
not judge hastily the plan of which we see only a 
fragment. There is sufficient basis for that faith 
which sees eventually the triumph of justice and 
right in the manifest intelligence in the great process 
of the world construction. So much adaptation to 
purpose we cannot imagine without a beneficent end 
toward which it is directed. So perfect a knowledge 
of the intricate processes of nature would be incom- 
patible with cruelty and injustice. We can afford 
to rest the case and await the elucidation which is 
to come somewhere in the process. Meantime it 
may be our lot to suffer and to supply some of the 
minor chords in the great symphony of life, and we 
should do it without complaining in the assurance 
that they are a necessary part of our growth. 
And here at this crucial point we will leave this 
31 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

unfortunate family group until the curtain rises 
again at the finale of this volume, where we will call 
the roll of all those who played the game of chance 
with the daisy's petals that morning in the summer 
sunshine. We shall bring them in review, after 
long years have rolled away, and witness the final 
outcome of their life's method. 



32 



CHAPTER IV 

THE EASIEST WAY 

I WISH now to summon another witness before 
this tribunal from the dim distant past. I want 
the jury which shall be my readers to hear the nega- 
tive evidence of one whose life was a complete ex- 
emplification of what men ought not to be. For con- 
venience we will call him Jim, and his date we will 
put back twenty years, though it might have been 
farther. 

He was a boy of commanding personality, and 
had some generous impulses. He had depth of in- 
tellect, but not depth of character. He always 
seemed to move by the force of gravity in the way of 
least resistance, and when temptations came his way 
he simply capitulated without an effort to resist. 
Remorse he sometimes felt, and resolutions he some- 
times made, but the temper of his mental steel was 
not good, and he could not maintain a negative reply 
when desires were calling. 

In that one word "No" is summed up more that 
makes for success in life, for spiritual growth, for 
development of character, than in all the other words 
33 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

of our vocabulary. And yet there are comparatively 
few people who know when and where to use it with- 
out mistakes. The difference between the rich man 
and the beggar, whether remote or present ; the dif- 
ference between the drunkard and the man of 
sobriety; the difference between the saint and the 
sinner — is all a matter of the courage, or otherwise, 
to maintain a negative attitude toward the things we 
should rule out of our life. 

Jim was the son of a mail contractor whose home 
was the rendezvous of gold seekers and gamblers 
and salqon men and all the riffraff that drift with the 
commercial current between mining camps. And 
this unwise father encouraged his son to lead the 
life of dissipation that was common with the men 
who made up his patronage. 

Environment is such a potent factor in the devel- 
opment of men and women that one is tempted some- 
times to rate all other conditions as very secondary 
to it. Especially is this true in the developmental 
period of boys and girls. The impetuous blood of 
youth is prone to defy restraint and to throw itself 
into that side of the balance which gives license to 
vice. Fortunately the same period of life is one 
susceptible in a marked degree to spiritual influ- 
ences. The greatest responsibility that God has put 
34 



THE EASIEST WAY 

upon us is the arrangement of suitable environment 
for our boys and girls. And we shall have to an- 
swer for it in our own day and generation by the 
degree of respectability or dishonor that comes to 
the progeny that are to follow us. 

When the old overland stage route was established 
through his native town, Jim became one of the 
drivers of the big coaches that were the real romance 
of the country roads. In those days the stage driver 
was the real aristocrat of the country. He wore 
high-topped boots, laundered shirts, and a wealth of 
silk handkerchiefs and fine cravats which were the 
envy of all the farmer boys whose revenues were 
far too limited to indulge in such luxuries. 

And Jim was a dandy fellow as he swung his 
team of four prancing steeds and his big coach 
around the curves of the road. And all the girls 
looked at him with admiration, and coveted the least 
attention he deigned to pay them. At the country 
dance he was quite the center of attraction and all 
feminine eyes were upon him. His very reckless- 
ness had a charm about it, which captivated, and 
his pertinent phrases became a part of the village 
vernacular. 

Unreasoning youth ! how little did his associates 
and admirers dream that the very things that were 
35 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

the means of his captivating them were to be the 
means of his undoing ! 

It was considered such a manly thing to smoke 
cigarettes, and on high occasions cigars, that Jim 
could not have maintained his exalted position in the 
juvenile mind for any time without acquiring these 
necessary accomplishments. A dandy stage driver 
without a cigarette could not be imagined. The 
self-satisfaction that is manifest in the way a young 
man holds his cigarette or cigar is a study in itself. 
The upcurling lip and the peculiar bend of his 
fingers as he rests between acts is the reflex of a 
mental condition most gratifying to the participant, 
but most ludicrous and obnoxious to the one who 
has to endure seeing him. Our Jim, like every other 
boy who takes up the smoking habit, discounted his 
chances for success in life by at least ten per 
cent. 

The man who denned a cigarette as a fire at one 
end and a fool at the other was not far short of the 
truth. I have seen three men die of tobacco heart, 
and scores of others become mentally and physically 
disabled. The poison nicotine affects all people who 
expose themselves to its baneful influence, but it has 
a peculiar affinity for the tissue cells of certain in- 
dividuals, and a selective action on different organs 
36 



THE EASIEST WAY 

of the susceptible person. If it is the heart that is 
selected, a mechanical difficulty soon develops which 
not infrequently proves fatal. If it is the brain 
cells that first manifest the poison, mental and moral 
degeneracy is the penalty. In fact, I believe that 
the moral fibre of any man who uses tobacco is dam- 
aged, and that he can never stand on the same level 
while he is under the influence of it that he did be- 
fore. The cigarette fiend is discounted as a laborer, 
discredited as a thinker, and rated down as a moral 
risk. Not only that, but the cigarette is the wedge 
that opens the way for other vices, often of a more 
serious import. 

The sequence of events from tobacco to whiskey 
was the way of this young man, as it is the way of 
countless thousands who begin by gentle gradation 
the downward course. An occasional drink at first 
seemed no impropriety, considering the kind of peo- 
ple he associated with. Why should not youth on 
certain occasions make merry the heart and lift the 
burden of care ? And Jim fell into the delusion that 
has broken more hearts, paralyzed more homes, and 
marked more men for destruction than any other 
thing in this world. For a long time his drinking 
bouts were only occasional affairs, and in his lucid 
intervals he kept himself fairly decent. After each 
37 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

wild orgie he suffered remorse and resolved that 
he would never repeat the process, but when the 
tempter came he capitulated each time with less and 
less resistance until his will power was completely 
overcome. 

He centered his attentions on one of the good 
girls of the village, and she was completely capti- 
vated by him. His reckless disregard of all con- 
ventional things, his apparent pertinent rejoinder to 
friend and foe alike, his boast of pugilistic prowess, 
were all marks of manliness in her eyes, and in his 
very vices she saw the mark of independence and 
individuality. She thought she could reform him. 
She was warned by all the good matrons of the vil- 
lage, and the gray-haired men shook their heads in 
disapproval of her hopeless task, but she would not 
be advised. There was a magnetism in his touch, 
there was a charm in his glance, which held her 
spellbound as the bird is held by the eye of a ser- 
pent. She could not reason, she was swayed only 
by her emotion. 

When years of suffering have taught their lesson, 
many women wake up to the folly of allowing senti- 
ment to mask their judgment in this most important 
of all the ventures of their life. And yet the world 
wags on in the same old way, the moth flies to the 
38 



THE EASIEST WAY 

fatal flame, the experience of others will not 
teach us. 

The woman who thinks she can reform a bad man 
by marrying him will be defeated every time. If 
he does not think enough of her to straighten up and 
walk the way of rectitude while she keeps him hop- 
ing and guessing, he will never straighten up when 
the prize is already in his possession beyond per- 
adventure. 

No, my young lady friend, if you are captivated 
by the charms of a reckless man, don't ever under- 
take the reform business by staking your soul and 
body on the issue, or you will simply throw yourself 
under the wheels of Juggernaut and be ground to 
powder. You can't afford such an experiment. 
The odds are too great against you. 

I am writing this long after its occurrence, in the 
life of these young people. The wedding day was 
auspicious, and Jim looked a prince as he stood be- 
side his beautiful companion, and she was all smiles 
and all hopes for the future, and the gray-haired 
men and the village dames forgot their gloomy fore- 
bodings in the poetry of the present hour. For a 
time the sunshine of love seemed to fall over their 
little domicile. The mutual satisfaction of being 
always together had brought a new force into their 
39 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

lives and they dreamed and built air castles to- 
gether. 

These happy days did not last long. One day the 
old tempter came back again, and Jim came in with 
a swagger and a stupid smile, and began to curse 
and swear. The terrified young wife was all com- 
passion as she covered his dishonored brow with 
kisses. She was sure that it was only a temporary 
lapse, and that the sunshine which was obscured by 
a passing cloud would come out as bright as ever. 
She did not think it of sufficient consequence to take 
a definite stand and issue an ultimatum. She did 
not comprehend that this was the beginning of the 
end of all happiness in her life. 

And right here, it seems to me, she showed the 
weakness that has been the undoing of many a happy 
home. If she had been uncompromising in her atti- 
tude, if she had told him that this day he had to 
choose between her companionship and the demon 
of drunkenness, I believe he would have capitulated. 
No woman should be compelled by social custom or 
stereotyped law to be the forced companion of a 
drunkard, nor to have her home pauperized and her 
family dishonored by the selfish indulgence of a de- 
generate man. An uncompromising stand at the 
beginning would settle the matter for all time, and 
40 



THE EASIEST WAY 

I believe any woman would be justified in taking 
such a position. 

A drunkard is a worse offender against society, 
in my judgment, than a thief. His delinquency is 
more imminent and far-reaching in its consequences 
than the crime of the man we send to jail for petty 
larceny. The thief does not apprehend the goods of 
poor people, because they have no chattels of com- 
mercial value to him. He takes from those who 
while they may feel the disappointment of being de- 
frauded are yet possessed of all the necessities of 
life. But the man who wilfully takes the money 
which is the product of his toil, and which by the 
laws of God and nature belongs to a helpless wife 
and dependent children, and appropriates it to his 
own selfish, unrighteous purpose, is one who robs 
the needy and defrauds the defenseless. And if we 
send a thief to the penitentiary for a period of 
months or years to expiate his crime of misappro- 
priation of the chattels of other people, we should 
have some form of punishment for the drunkard that 
would be proportionate to his offense. I believe 
there was wholesome discipline £n the old-time 
whipping post, barbarous as it seemed, and for the 
sake of this kind of an offender it is a pity that such 
a speedy form of retribution could not be restored. 
41 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

When society collectively makes itself the arbiter 
of the rights of its units, and invokes its traditional 
laws to adjust differences that arise between them, 
it exercises a necessary and imperative function, but 
when society stands by and connives at this form of 
robbery, and shuts its eyes to the spectacle of pau- 
perized women and suffering children, it is weak, 
nay, almost vicious in its indifference. 

When the chance of education, of Christian train- 
ing, of social recognition, of proper clothing, of 
quality and quantity of food to eat are all sacrificed 
to the unreasonable appetite of a human monster 
who has become lost to all the better instincts of 
life ; when the family altar, which has been conse- 
crated to love and devotion to a common cause, 
becomes a pandemonium of riot and vice and de- 
generacy through the selfishness of one individual, 
then society should step in and show its strong hand 
and adopt some remedy for this outrageous perver- 
sion. When we recall the fact that the vice of the 
drunkard does not end with his own life, but that 
he hands down to posterity the real physical defects 
that he has brought upon himself; that he often 
transmits epilepsy, dipsomania, insanity and a pre- 
disposition to crime, the duty of society becomes 
more imperative than ever. 
42 



THE EASIEST WAY 

In this particular home we are reviewing, the 
blight of the drunkard fell like a dark pall over it, 
and extinguished love and all the better instincts of 
life. Children were born to the inheritance of pau- 
perism and went forth with the stamp of crime fas- 
tened upon them. It was much to their credit that 
they did not all go the highway of ruin. The wife 
became broken in spirit and looked like a faded 
flower. The family wardrobe was reduced to a col- 
lection of rags and tatters, the mere remnants of bet- 
ter days, and often the larder was completely de- 
pleted. Hunger was a sensation to which they be- 
came habituated, and the pinching cold of winter 
made inroads upon the unfortunate victims of this 
most unhappy home. Jim had no regular employ- 
ment, because people could not depend on him. 
Laziness always finds an excuse for itself in the 
claim that other people have prevented its victim 
from having any opportunity. And this was the 
refuge of our poor degenerate Jim as he walked the 
streets in the garb of a vagabond, and sank lower 
in the social scale with the declining sun of each day. 

He had a habit of buying things always on credit, 
and never seemed to have any intention of paying 
for them. He made promises daily which he never 
intended to fulfill. 

43 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

In high places as well as in low places there are 
people who never grasp the significance of credit as 
a factor in their success, and of lack of it as a factor 
in their failures. The confidence that people have 
in your honesty is the equivalent in financial potency 
of a balance to your credit in the bank. When 
emergencies come in your finances you can draw 
upon it, just as you can draw on a bank account. 
But when your credit is gone the world looks with 
little mercy on your importunity. No matter how 
urgent the need, people will not lend to a man who 
has proved himself a bad paymaster. 

Jim had "run his face" wherever he could get 
people to trust him. Creditors were always press- 
ing him and making demands which he was utterly 
unable to satisfy. Every cent he produced by fair 
means or foul went into the coffers of the saloon- 
keeper, and even the wages of his unfortunate 
wife, when she made heroic efforts to emancipate 
herself, were appropriated whenever he had oppor- 
tunity to get possession of them. Thus years of 
suffering and dishonor wore themselves away in this 
degrading process. And still society demanded that 
the galling bonds which held innocent people to 
such an obligation were indissoluble. That the out- 
raged wife and children must honor and obey a man 
44 



THE EASIEST WAY 

who had descended below the level of the brutes, 
that they must submit to continue in the process of 
destruction though every day they were brought 
lower and lower in dishonor, was altogether wrong. 

I think our fundamental error in such cases lies 
in our failure to give drunkenness its proper magni- 
tude in the category of crimes and to recognize from 
the far-reaching effects of it, that it is a felony more 
destructive to society than arson or theft; that the 
degeneration of it does not end with the perpetrator, 
but is handed down to generations yet unborn. The 
daily offerings at this family altar were tears and 
pitiful appeals, but they were all to no purpose. God 
has surely forsaken that home where a drunken 
demon is enthroned as guardian and protector. 

There was one consolation that came out of the 
direst distress of this blighted family circle. Jim, 
the unworthy author of all their afflictions, was 
charitable enough to run away and leave them. He 
drifted about with the irregular criminal element and 
plunged into all the excesses known to that order 
of society. To implore the aid of the people in the 
streets and make his rounds as a common beggar 
seemed now no impropriety to him, who had once 
held his head erect in the satisfaction of fine man- 
hood. And to spend the money bestowed by char- 
45 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

itable hands to assuage hunger at the nearest grog 
shop seemed no compromise of dignity. 

When the drunkard reaches a certain level in his 
downward career he ceases to be governed by any 
moral code and recognizes no rule of society for his 
guidance. Animals even of the lowest type are true 
to their instincts, which are the unwritten laws of 
their life. But the drunkard has not a single in- 
stinct that is not vitiated and perverted. He sinks 
in this way to a level far beneath the brute creation, 
and wallows in the ooze and slime of the lowest 
dregs of animal life. 

To me this is one of the saddest stories in the 
volume of human existence. To see the human 
form, which was created in the image of God, 
shriveled with a self-inflicted blight; to see faith 
and charity and all the better feelings of life all 
submerged in the terrible maelstrom of drunken- 
ness ; to see reason dethroned and a demoniacal 
possession substituted for the personality that once 
was possessed of God-like powers in embryo with 
untold possibilities for the future. The recording 
angel must blush as he flies up to heaven's chancery 
with the word. 

To commit suicide in the face of such a condition 
would seem like the only rational thing to do. 
46 



THE EASIEST WAY 

Indeed, the only commendable thing we have to say 
about the last years of him whose biography we 
are reviewing is that he mustered up courage enough 
to put a bullet through his brain and stop the 
terrible escapement which was vibrating to such an 
unholy purpose. 

What a queer thing is the crime of suicide ! To 
the mind possessed of all its normal attributes it is 
hard to comprehend the view point of the one who 
sees such desperation in his present circumstances 
that he chooses this tragic and most unnatural way 
of exit from this world. Suicide is ordinarily the 
work of a coward, but it may be the last culminating 
act of a hero. When it is chosen as the way of 
escape from the natural and inevitable consequence 
of perversions in our life ; when it becomes the 
subterfuge by means of which to avoid the necessity 
of living down or rectifying the mistakes we have 
made, it is a cowardly act, bespeaking a soul of 
depravity. And the ignomy of it increases with the 
magnitude of the obligation escaped. The man who 
has a wife and family depending daily on the product 
of his toil is little short of a monster when he shirks 
his moral obligation in this tragic way, and throws 
them, with one desperate stroke at his jugulars, on 
the mercy of the world for all the years to come. 

47 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

We can imagine, and indeed history records, 
instances in which souls of the highest nobility have 
chosen rather to destroy themselves than to capitu- 
late to dishonor, or to be degraded by others. The old 
Japanese tradition of the propriety of self-destruc- 
tion when the loss of all honor is weighed in the 
balance against it, though apparently one of the 
survivals of barbarous ages, has yet something in it 
to challenge our admiration if not our approval. 
Suicide links itself so closely with insanity, that we 
may rightly assign to it a place in the great majority 
of cases with the mental aberrations. 

And indeed it seems not improbable to me that it 
might be a manifestation of one of the great con- 
servative laws of nature, to eliminate from society 
in a feasible way some of its unprofitable units. 
When a vessel at sea has become of no further use 
as a conveyer of passengers or of merchandise, to al- 
low it to drift as a hulk aimlessly on the waves would 
not only be a useless thing but it would be a danger- 
ous thing, threatening always the integrity of other 
vessels. And so we dismantle and reduce it to safety 
by destroying it as a distinct entity. It might be 
that Nature in her great far-reaching processes is 
exercising some such Providential foresight, and 
implanting the desire for self destruction in the mind 

48 



THE EASIEST WAY 

which has not only become useless, but has become 
vicious. 

Let me not be misunderstood. I am not writing 
the vindication of the ignoble soul who dodges his 
moral responsibilities by this kind of subterfuge, nor 
am I condoning such an unnatural action. I am 
simply suggesting that the apparent paradoxes in 
nature may have their purpose, and no doubt do fit 
into a great beneficent plan which our limited per- 
spective fails to grasp in its full significance. 

Let us take one last farewell look, before the 
curtain falls, at the mortal remains of him who was 
so bright and promising and prepossessing in his 
youth. In a city far away, in the potter's field, he is 
buried, without rite or ceremony. No tear of pity 
was shed as he went ignobly down to his last long 
rest, and was known to the world no more. Let 
us hope that in the plan of redemption there may be 
propitiation for even such as he, and that the dark 
blot of crime may be lifted from his brow, and that 
he may have another chance to be free from the 
terrible thralldom which crept so insidiously and 
imperceptibly into his life and blighted all its 
chances. 



49 



CHAPTER V 

RAGS ON THE FAMILY TREE 

I SUMMON now another witness. I call for one 
more of the old familiar group who conjured 
with the daisy's petals, and a fine physical type of a 
boy comes forth from the halls of memory with all 
the promptness of a magician's bidding, and seats 
himself upon the witness stand ready to be inter- 
rogated. 

There is not much in a name. The most common- 
place appellation becomes glorious when it is the 
indicator of a great soul, and the most euphonious 
combination of syllables becomes discordant to our 
ears when it is the indicator of an inferior being. 

We will choose at random the name Joseph for 
this friend of bygone days and hide his personality 
under this biblical appellation. 

Joseph was the son of a wealthy man and had a 
brother who had attained to great distinction in 
legislative and diplomatic circles. 

And Joseph was very proud of the family name, 
and thought that the social and financial standing 
of his people were personal assets that everybody 

50 



RAGS ON THE FAMILY TREE 

should acknowledge and give proper consideration 
to in their estimate of him. He estimated rightly 
this misjudgment of the human mind, which cannot 
get away from the fallacy of coats of arms, or of 
distinguished pedigrees in its rating of the individual 
man. 

Heredity, we admit, has its bearing on mental and 
moral traits. The birthright of each man is the 
accumulated soul momentum of the progenitors be- 
fore him back to the first pair. But when a man 
flaunts his pedigree and the worldly possessions of 
his relatives as a claim for recognition it is generally 
an indication that he has forfeited his birthright and 
acknowledged himself a satellite ready and willing 
to revolve around somebody else, and not a luminary 
to give out light himself. 

To come of a noble pedigree is no palliation of 
your condition, if you yoilrself are a vagabond. To 
hang rags and tatters on the family tree, does not 
adorn it, nor do the rags and tatters profit any by the 
conspicuous contact. 

As a student, Joseph was a drifter without rudder 
or helm to guide him. He followed the lines of 
least resistance, and when he met with obstacles in 
the way, instead of bending his energies for their 
removal, he simply angulated around them and went 
51 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

on as if nothing had happened. The farmer who 
plows around the old stumps and leaves them to 
hamper the work of future years will never have 
much of a farm. And the man in any profession 
who does not clear the way before him and go down 
to the very foundation of things, and take full pos- 
session of the fundamentals will have the same 
limitations as the man who leaves stumps in his 
field. 

Particularly is this true in the work of the student. 
The underlying principles of all our arts and sciences 
are simple and easy to comprehend. In the science of 
mathematics we deal first with the four elementary 
principles, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and 
division ; and with these as a stock in trade we pro- 
ceed to all those processes of reasoning which end 
in calculus and conic sections. And yet the whole 
science of mathematics — a science so beautiful in its 
elucidation, and so grand and comprehensive in its 
scope that it reaches over the abyss of untold mil- 
lions of miles and deals with the fixed stars of the 
firmament — is comprehended in the different appli- 
cation of those four fundamental principles, addition, 
subtraction, multiplication, and division. 

Education is evolution. Its accretions accumulate 
on the inductive plan. We master the fundamental 

52 



RAGS ON THE FAMILY TREE 

facts, and then proceed to discover those compre- 
hensive laws which correlate these facts into an 
interdependent system. I say advisably that we 
discover those laws, for the true student rises to 
his own generalizations, and enjoys the thrill and 
feels all the emotion of a new discovery every time 
he puts facts together and establishes in his mind 
the law that correlates them. Education is beautiful 
to the one who gets that lucid insight into the fun- 
damentals, which makes their combination into 
generalizations easy and direct. But to the grovel- 
ing mind which always sees through a glass dimly, it 
is a drudgery, irksome and without pleasure. 

When we go from the theoretical world into the 
practical, when we meet the really serious problems 
of life, our mastery of fundamentals tells with 
greater precision than ever. 

We see the surgeon apply his knife, and we marvel 
at tne accuracy with which he cuts all around the 
vital organs, when a human life would be the for- 
feiture for the least error in the direction of his 
incision. 

If we follow the career of that surgeon from its 
inception as a medical student we will find him 
pacing his floor in the midnight hours, rehearsing 
to himself the facts of anatomy until he is driven 

53 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

almost to madness by the dead memory task. That 
was the price he had to pay to become a surgeon. 
Instinctively he knew what it would cost and was 
willing to make the sacrifice. It is the mastery of 
fundamentals that makes the surgeon's work easy. 
Without that he would bungle and hesitate. 

We read with pleasure the beautiful mellifluous 
cadences of a Gray's Elegy and wonder at the na- 
tural gift of the man who could produce such a 
poem. On the night before his great battle on the 
heights of Abraham, General Wolf, as he drifted 
down the Saint Lawrence River with his brave men 
who were the next day to see him immortalized in 
the hour of his death, rehearsed a stanza from this 
beautiful poem, and then said, "I would rather be 
the author of that than to whip the French to- 
morrow." But if we go into the history of this 
masterpiece of our English poesy, we shall find the 
man Gray for fourteen years studying the manners 
and customs of rural folk, and adjusting and re- 
adjusting his stanzas over all that period of time. 

When we receive with satisfaction the final pro- 
duct, we do not stop to think of all the elements that 
have gone into it. But the painstaking worker is 
always rewarded for his diligence. Labor has its 
sure mead. We love to do the things we know how 

54 



RAGS ON THE FAMILY TREE 

to do. Work is not drudgery when it involves the 
application of principles that have grown into our 
life, by long continued thought and attention 
Irksomeness is born of ignorance, and the man who 
works muscles without brains will always be a slave. 

Our friend Joseph was wont to borrow the 
answers of problems from his neighbor to the right 
or to the left, contenting himself with the thought 
that the teacher had been deceived, and that he 
would get full credit for his ready preparation. It 
did not dawn on him that his whole life was to be 
a reflex of that deception, and that he would be 
called upon to render account for the uttermost 
farthing of that fraudulent advantage which he 
thought he had gained. 

The most foolish person in this world is the one 
who deceives himself. There was a boy from a 
country village who is to figure in the later pages 
of this little book, who used to furnish Joseph with 
a great bulk of his school work ready for recita- 
tion. He was an unpretending plodder without 
adornment of person or manner, but with a 
soul that hungered for the truth. Joseph was 
boon companion to this boy in their room when 
he needed ■ assistance, but when he met him in 
the public highways or the social gatherings he did 

55 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

what the priest did in the parable of the good 
Samaritan — passed by on the other side. 

When years had rolled away, and this plodding 
boy had risen to distinction, and Joseph had 
acknowledged defeat in his life's struggle, and had 
narrowed his sphere of action down almost to the 
vanishing point and his circle of associates to a mean 
faction of the baser sort in a village, they met again 
in a great crowd, and Joseph was not only anxious 
to do him homage publicly but paid him such a 
compliment as he had rarely received even from 
his most devoted friends. 

When we look back on our school days, par- 
ticularly we of the country extraction, we have 
vivid memories of those who were kind to us when 
we were unknown quantities, and had no claim on 
anything but the magnanimity of the more fortunate 
ones who had already attained to social prestige. 

To be courteous to a green country boy, and treat 
him with due consideration requires a certain nobil- 
ity of soul, which the great multitude do not possess. 
I have been through the process, and know the 
feeling that comes into the life of the new recruit 
when he meets with one of those rare individuals 
who take him into their confidence, and treat him 
as a comrade. In my memory there shall ever be 

56 



RAGS ON THE FAMILY TREE 

fresh a few persons, who did not disdain me in those 
days of misgiving and overweening fear, when I 
first came from the country village with the odor of 
the farm on my clothing, and found myself at a 
disadvantage in the presence of the boys and girls 
who had been reared in the cities. How many of 
those butterflies have I seen to fold up their gaudy 
wings and settle down as dull grubs of the earth to 
creep and crawl the rest of their mortal career. 
Some of those stories are really pitiful. But they 
never dreamed of such contingencies in the hour of 
their glory. They soared aloft unmindful of the 
imprisoned chrysali that were one day to break open 
their cocoons and join the ranks. Their disdain was 
unmerciful. 

But there were a few, thanks to the better side of 
humanity, who did not disavow the country boys 
and girls. My memory shall ever cherish their 
names. Some of them have fallen asleep long ago, 
and are known only by the remembrance of their 
noble beaming. And some of them have grown 
into the full estate of manhood and womanhood, 
and the nobility which characterized their lives as 
boys and girls has told out through all the years, and 
they have become grand men and women. I never 
meet such a one that I do not have a feeling of 
57 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

veneration come over me ; a feeling of adoration that 
amounts almost to worship. 

Our Joseph knew not much of the strenuous side 
of life. He loved to indulge himself in long morn- 
ing slumbers, and to rouse himself in time only to 
swallow a hasty breakfast and rush off to try and 
answer to the morning roll call, which he often 
missed by a considerable margin. He never seemed 
to realize how much worry he could have eliminated 
from his life by being five minutes ahead of time 
always instead of that much behind time. 

When we have to catch a train or meet some 
important appointment, it is so easy to make our 
plan so that it brings us with a margin of a few 
minutes to the good, and we can maintain the dignity 
and the equanimity of our minds so perfectly with 
that kind of arrangement, that it is a wonder any 
sane person should inflict upon himself the dis- 
comfiture of procrastination. The mental force we 
dissipate by the worry of being late is a constant 
drain upon our vital reserve, which tells with great 
effect in the sum total of our achievements. 

When we begin the activities of the day it is an 
easy matter to lay out our plan in order, to string 
our daily events on the mental rosary, so that every- 
thing will fall into its proper sequence, and no one 

58 



RAGS ON THE FAMILY TREE 

thing will intrench upon the domain of another. To 
subordinate all other things to the one thing we have 
in hand, and focus the whole energy of our mind 
upon it, is the way to make a success of it. But the 
dabbler who tries to focus on half a dozen different 
things at once is the one who will diffuse his mental 
energy and bring nothing to speedy execution. 

Our Joseph had been fondled and pampered by an 
over indulgent mother so much that he made a 
careful study of his own comfort, and never was 
known to do anything that had the least element 
of self-sacrifice or self-abnegation in it. And right 
here is where he ran counter to one of the very 
fundamental elements of success. 

The young man who cannot suffer cold and 
hunger and fatigue at times without complaining; 
who cannot put in extra shifts when he has a rush 
order, and supplement the day by splicing on a part 
of the night if occasion requires, might as well write 
his name on the plebeian list, and content himself 
to be rated as a failure. 

The over-anxious mother, who is so mindful 
of every comfort of her son that she cannot bear to 
think of his ever being hungry or cold or tired, is 
one of the greatest impediments to the growth of 
that son one could imagine. It is out of these very 

59 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

strenuous things that he is to develop character 
if he is ever going to have any; and in its ultimate 
effects her over-kindness is the worst sort of 
cruelty. 

The mother whose overweening compassion for- 
bids the pain that is incident to the correction of 
crooked feet when her child is born with that 
deformity, is the most cruel person we can imagine, 
when we think of the far reaching effects of her 
supposed kindness. The temporary physical suffer- 
ing which could have been washed away by a few 
childish tears is transformed into a mental anguish 
which knows no mitigation for the rest of the 
natural life. The parent who permits his son to 
taste sometimes the strenuous side of life, to know 
some privations, to be familiar with fatigue and 
hunger and any other discomfort incident to the 
struggle for success is the one who is the boy's real 
benefactor in the end. 

And so the young man who has been pampered 
in his home and spoiled and taught the way of 
comfort and ease will in the great majority of cases 
suffer the anguish of defeat in years to come when 
there is no help for his condition. 

When we go out from under the parental roof, 
and have to stand on our own responsibility against 

60 



RAGS ON THE FAMILY TREE 

the stern realities of life, we will find that the world 
is not made of sugar and water. We will have to 
encounter privations and discomforts and dis- 
appointments, and if our training has been such that 
we are entirely unprepared for these things we are 
most pitiable creatures. 

Our Joseph was wont sometimes to be unmindful 
of others in his effort at self-gratification, and to 
neglect those little amenities of life which are ' so 
essential to the profession of being a gentleman. 
Particularly was this true when he dealt with those 
he regarded as inferior to himself. To him it seemed 
quite a matter of indifference that he should display 
the selfish, ungentlemanly side of his nature when 
dealing with them, even though it was good policy 
to feign the attributes of a perfect gentleman when 
he dealt with the class of boys and girls he re- 
garded as his equals or superiors. 

And this is the real crucial test of a gentleman. 
It requires no effort on the part of anybody to be 
polite to those he is anxious to please. But to 
extend the same courtesies to the forlorn boy or 
girl of the lower intellectual levels, or to the vaga- 
bond who has chosen the way of ignorance and 
rags or who had it thrust upon him, requires a 
magnanimity of soul which stamps its possessor 
61 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

with that inborn refinement that is the only indicator 
of true gentility. 

In European travel you sometimes meet with 
persons of the so-called upper classes, who will 
respond to your courteous request for information 
about your street number, or the road you should 
choose, by elevating their chin, and walking by 
with a look of disdain in their countenance and an 
air of utter indifference to your pressing need for 
the information which they could easily impart. 
Instead of being classed as a duke or a lord such 
an individual should be regarded as a savage. The 
wild man of the forest has more of the real elements 
of thej gentleman in his make up, than these partic- 
ular barbarians of the type I am speaking about, 
who imagine themselves set apart by nature on a 
plane above the level of common folk, with the 
prerogative of reply or contemptuous disdain as a 
natural birthright. I concede to them no such 
distinction. 

A courteous bearing is one of the greatest factors 
of success in life. And those very people who do not 
appear to have any legitimate claim upon our atten- 
tion will often prove to be the means of our access 
to others whose patronage we rightly covet. In the 
game of life hearts are always trumps. Words of 

62 



RAGS ON THE FAMILY TREE 

kindness are like bread cast upon the waters. After 
many days they will come back. It is wise to speak 
cordially and make social overtures to every re- 
spectable person we meet. The great man and the 
small man alike are pleased to have attention paid to 
them. Once in a while we may meet churls who 
show their teeth and resent friendly advances, but 
we can deal with them just as we do with a donkey 
that kicks at us — keep our composure and pass by 
and commiserate his lot for being a donkey. 

Europe with its artificial social classification has 
adopted the stupid method of social seclusiveness, 
and people often spend hours together in the close 
contact which travel imposes without speaking to 
each other. Each one is afraid to speak to his 
neighbor to the right or to the left for fear he might 
be snubbed by a duke or a lord. Eastern America 
has in a great measure aped the same stupidity and 
fallen into the same method. It has remained for 
the great developing west to point out the fraternal 
bond, which is at once the birthright and the pleas- 
ant duty of all respectable people, and with disregard 
of all conventionalities to develop the true spirit of 
comradeship among men. 

Our Joseph appeared to be lucky in at least one 
thing. He gained the affections of a lovable girl. 
63 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

After the school days were ended, and we all went 
our several ways to begin the serious work of life, 
he journeyed far over the mountains and brought our 
much admired Lenora to be his life's companion. 

As a social factor the high school and college have 
served a very useful purpose in this one thing, that 
it brings together from sections remote and near 
young men and young women of all classes, and as- 
sociates them in that intellectual and social contact 
which enables them to choose their affinities. The 
high school has been the great social kneading 
board where all the social atoms have been mixed 
together and each brushing up against the others, ti- 
trated and retitrated until it found its affinity, if there 
were any affinity for it to find. The baking process 
was a later development, and some of those combina- 
tions have turned out to be dough, and some have 
turned sour, and some have worked up into the most 
perfect product. The intellect-leaven permeates the 
whole lump, and starts the processes of development 
going, and some of the molecules continue to respond 
to it, and to vibrate with a greater and greater ampli- 
tude as the years roll by, and some grow indifferent 
and vibrate less and less until they become dead and 
cold. 

The matter of affinities is one that interests every- 
64 



DRIFTING WITHOUT A RUDDER 

body, and at one period of every life assumes 
transcendent importance. Most of the meetings 
and partings in this life are a matter of chance, some 
of them I believe a matter of destiny, and but few 
of them a matter of deliberate arrangement. We 
discover our affinities something after this manner: 

If in a room where a piano is standing we produce 
a sound from some other sonorous instrument, and 
listen, as the vibrations die away, there will be one 
key of that piano that is giving back the same tone, 
while all the other keys of the instrument are silent. 
The one wire which by its texture and tension can 
take up the sympathetic vibrations is the only one 
that gets the sonorous message from its kindred viol 
or harp. The two are perfectly attuned to each 
other and exist in a condition of sympathetic rap- 
port. 

And this is a symbol of our life's experiences. In 
the gamut of life we meet with those who give back 
our thoughts and reflect our emotions, because they 
are attuned by nature to vibrate at the same ampli- 
tude that we are. These are our affinities. These 
are they we take into the sanctum sanctorum of 
our souls, and reveal to them the hidden springs 
of our life, knowing that we shall find sympathy. 
These are they we link together into the select 

65 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

circle of our real friends. As we migrate on the 
pathway of life we gather them around one by one, 
and put them on our heart string as the devotee 
strings beads on her rosary. 

The rest of the gamut of life we meet in the 
rialto of social and commercial barter. We touch 
their lives by necessity or by choice, and render to 
them all those amenities which society demands and 
which gentle breeding dictates, but they never touch 
our inner life. We deal with them for mutual 
advantage in a material way, but the merchandise 
of the soul we do not exchange with them. They 
are separated from our inmost life by a void 
which nature has not filled in, and which no amount 
of effort is able to bridge over. 

Affinities may be of the same lineal descent, born 
under the same roof, and nurtured in the same 
domicile, or their extraction may be, as it commonly 
is, very remote from each other. The bond of affin- 
ity may link together souls in the connubial relation- 
ship, and when its units are carefully selected, so that 
each is the counterpoise of the soul, vibrations of the 
other, it finds its most perfect manifestation. There 
is nothing in all this world so beautiful as the 
matrimonial alliance between two souls who are 
perfect affinities. But to see people flying in the 

66 



DRIFTING WITHOUT A RUDDER 

face of the laws of nature, and trying to wed 
together what God never intended for counter- 
parts is the daily farce which society never 
ceases to repeat to its own detriment. This 
is the one greatest factor for rounding out the 
record of the divorce court year by year. People 
are trying to make water run up hill, and the pius 
folk are upbraiding them because they are unable 
to do it. 

I am surprised that nature has not provided a 
means of more careful selection, so that affinities 
generally, instead of occasionally, should mate to- 
gether. Perhaps Socrates was right when he thought 
to develop forbearance by marrying a shrew. But 
the average mortal would be willing to get along 
without the forbearance, rather than to pay such 
a price for it. In a lesser degree there may be an 
advantage in a matrimonial alliance of two people 
of different temperaments, if they have some com- 
mon ground to stand on, some part of their soul 
vibrations that finds mutual counter-balance. But 
God pity that unfortunate home where husband and 
wife are entirely and completely the antithesis of 
each other. The divergence of such a couple is 
like the lines of a triangle; the farther you follow 
them the greater becomes their separation. And 

67 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

that repulsive force which drives apart husband 
and wife is generally communicated to their off- 
spring, and the whole family group find themselves 
subtending the outer circumference of a centrifuge, 
the diameter of which increases in length as the 
years roll by. 

This latter condition was the lot of our Joseph 
and Lenora, after the play-life was ended, and they 
settled down to the serious problems of life. 

She was gentle and refined, and gracious in her 
bearing, with a sensitive soul, on all points, of justice 
and honor ; while he had that element of elasticity in 
his conscience which made it easy for him to adapt 
himself to little unscrupulous things for petty per- 
sonal ends. 

He thought it was all right to cheat, and to take 
advantage of the credulity or of the necessity of 
others, provided he could so conceal his act that 
the multitude would not know about it. He be- 
lieved that there is a commercial value to falsehood 
when it is properly safeguarded. He would have 
been horrified at this expression of his motives, but 
secretly to himself he must have thought it out in 
this very way. And the community where he lived 
was not slow to discover these innate weaknesses in 
his character, and to put upon him the proper 

68 



DRIFTING WITHOUT A RUDDER 

rating. The man who thinks he can cheat and tell 
lies and not be found out is a fool. A lie will pro- 
claim itself sooner or later from the housetop, and a 
fraudulent action will read itself into the popular 
estimation of any man in spite of himself. 

When two persons of such divergent temperament 
meet, there is sure to be conflict. The dove who 
finds herself mated with a hawk will soon discover 
the hopelessness of the task of reforming him, and 
give up in despair. If the divergence is not so 
diametrical, and the contracting parties are willing 
to subdue themselves, and to give and take, and 
withal to be tolerant of one another, there is a 
possibility of establishing common ground enough 
to make life endurable. But when dishonor links 
itself with honor, vice with virtue, gross vulgarity 
with refinement, cold selfishness with benevolence, 
there is formed a combination that can never in the 
nature of things be compatible. And these were the 
elements which Joseph and Lenora were trying 
to harmonize; these were the heterogeneous mental 
components which they proposed to work up into a 
homogeneous mixture. 

But the faith that was born of infatuation was 
soon to discover its own defeat. The artificial 
semblance of refinement which Joseph maintained 

69 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

through the nuptial period needed only a suitable 
occasion to show that it was only a sham. And oc- 
casions came thick and fast. 

Profanity is such a senseless thing that one 
wonders how people of sanity can indulge in it. If 
they do not believe in a God it is silly to swear by 
his name, and if they do believe in a God it is sacri- 
lege to do so. The reason men swear, I imagine, 
is that it gives them a chance in an emphatic way 
to show their defiance of the traditions of the 
church ; to demonstrate their independence of all 
those traditional rules of conduct which society col- 
lectively has culled from the best precepts of the 
past and demanded of its subjects as a mark of re- 
spectability. The profane man would have you 
know that if he chooses to go to hell cross lots it is 
nobody's business but his own, and he does not 
choose to be hampered in his privilege. 

Our Joseph was given to profanity, at first only 
periodically, but later habitually. Falsehood came 
close in the wake of it, and was soon so flagrant 
that no effort was made to conceal it. 

The old saying that birds of a feather flock 
together is wonderfully true to life. Joseph 
gathered about him a group of reckless men 
who prided themselves on being the common 

70 



DRIFTING WITHOUT A RUDDER 

enemy of religion and of all people who stood 
for the better ideals of society. He became an 
apostate from the faith of his fathers, and fought 
with all the venom of his perverted nature the cause 
which had brought his parents through untold hard- 
ships and privations over the trackless plains and 
planted them in an undeveloped country to endure 
all the trials of pioneering. This they did to pro- 
vide in advance for his comfort and well-being. 

It would be unjust to demand of us that we think 
the same thoughts and hold the same opinions that 
our fathers have done. The world would not prog- 
ress very much with such a method. As the world 
grows in experience, we must expand in our mental 
horizon to keep pace with it. But our expansion 
should be dignified and tolerant. We should not 
ridicule the opinions of those we dissent from, and 
especially those opinions which have meant so much 
in the lives of our gray haired parents, who suffered 
all things for their loyalty to a cause, which no 
matter what it meant to others was a . potential 
moral force to them. The apostate who justifies the 
irregularities of his own perverted life by attacking 
the creed he was born and bred in is a traitor at 
heart no matter what the creed he is attacking. 

In my experience apostates from any of the creeds 
71 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

have been among the most bitter and vindictive 
people I have ever known. And Joseph was no 
exception to the rule. He became the inveterate 
enemy of all authority, ecclesiastical or secular. He 
read into the lives of all men who held positions 
of trust motives of the basest kind, and gnashed his 
teeth as he related their alleged misdeeds. He was 
like the Bible description of Esau — his hand was 
against every man, and every man's hand was 
against him. The very ostracism that grew out 
of his relentless raillery was interpreted as a deliber- 
ate conspiracy against him. Everybody and every- 
thing seemed wrong except himself. His diminu- 
tive soul arrayed itself against all the better 
instincts of life. The importunity of the 
poor and the needy fell upon deaf ears when 
any appeal came up to him. He disclaimed 
any responsibility for their condition, and shifted 
accordingly all obligation for their relief. If God 
made the poor, he used to say, then God should 
provide the means to maintain them. He was 
entirely blind to the fact that charity is a greater 
blessing to the one who gives than to the one who 
receives. From the standpoint of the beggar, our 
gift which relieves his hunger is the gratification 
of a passing desire, and to-morrow he is back at 

72 



DRIFTING WITHOUT A RUDDER 

the same old place, with the same old desire gnaw- 
ing at his vitals. 

I once had a friend who, as he was driving on a 
country road, met a huge muscular young fellow 
trudging along in the role of tramp. My friend 
stopped his carriage when the young man accosted 
him and begged for a ride. "Where are you 
going?" inquired the man in the carriage, and the 
tramp replied: "I don't know; I have no place to 
go ; I am drifting somewhere." "If I were to spend 
the strength of my horse to pull you seventeen 
miles and put you down in the town where I am 
going," said my friend, "you would be no nearer 
your destination than you are now. You might 
as well be where you are." 

And from the standpoint of the beggar this is just 
about what our indiscriminate charity amounts to. 
We assuage the hunger of to-day, but to-morrow 
the morsel we gave is gone, and the same sense of 
hunger is back worse than ever. We do even worse 
than that. For each time a human being stultifies 
his soul to beg gifts from another human being he 
takes a stride downward in the way of humiliation 
and soul-distintegration, which tends to bring about 
the total extinction of all semblance of character. 

Mendacity is a continuous discount on manhood. 
73 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

From a par value of one hundred per cent, which 
is the birthright of each individual, the first offense 
strikes out ninety per cent, and the remainder soon 
shrinks to the zero mark. The only charity that is 
really in the interest of the recipient is a provision 
whereby he can help himself, and return value re- 
ceived for the benefit bestowed. 

Your free gifts to beggars and donations to sots 
are in their ultimate results not charitable but bane- 
ful. The bestowal of benefits in the proper way 
is a social problem which has not yet been solved. 
But to us as individuals comes the daily prayer 
of the afflicted, and we are expected to act in the 
present moment. This hungry man cannot to-day 
undo the errors of his life, though he is well aware 
that his present plight is a result of them. But he 
must have food to-day or he will famish. The error 
I am obliged to commit to prevent him from starv- 
ing is an inevitable result of the failure of society 
to give him a chance to help himself. I cannot 
inaugurate a system in a moment, but I can relieve a 
suffering fellow creature of his hunger whenever I 
will. By a social error which I am in no way 
responsible for I am obliged to conspire against the 
integrity of his soul whenever I put forth my hand 
to relieve his affliction. 

74 



DRIFTING WITHOUT A RUDDER 

But to me who has this priceless opportunity of 
soul discipline, there is to be a lasting benefit, not 
to be measured by worldly standards. Whenever 
I can sacrifice my own feelings and take up the 
cause of another human being who is in need, the 
consciousness of the role I am playing as benefactor 
— as savior — leaves its impression upon my mind 
and augments my stock of character. The beggar 
gets a transcient benefit which to-morrow is no 
benefit at all, but my reward is eternal. My ten- 
ure of worldly possessions is transient, but the 
assets of my soul are self-perpetuating and will en- 
dure forever. And this phase of charity is just what 
men of small souls never can comprehend. When 
by accident or by external pressure they are moved 
to do a generous deed, they seek an immediate re- 
ward by sounding a trumpet, that the multitude 
might praise them, and thereby increase their credit 
among men. They choose the baubles of this world 
in lieu of the riches of eternity for their reward 
and do not recognize the error. 

And this was the unfortunate mental condition of 
him whose life we are reviewing. He took ad- 
vantage of every opportunity that presented itself 
to gouge and defraud his neighbors, until they lost 
all confidence in him. Friendship was an unknown 

75 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

quantity in his life. The love of his fellow man 
he never dreamed of. The lust of gain was the one 
thing that overshadowed his soul completely. And 
the generous hearted Lenora found herself hedged 
about so completely that she had to shrink down to 
his dimensions for the peace of her home. If she 
had been possessed of more strength of character, 
she might have asserted herself and dominated the 
situation, but she allowed herself to be completely 
overshadowed by this man of strong impulses, and 
her fine personality was buried amidst the chaotic 
contents of their inhospitable home. All the poetry 
of youth went out of her life, and the fine sentiment 
which had woven itself into the fabric of her dreams. 
Days of emptiness were followed by nights of re- 
gret. The years multiplied over her, the finger of 
Time made rude tracings on her countenance, and 
the early autumn frosts played havoc with her 
golden tresses. 

If the young woman of twenty summers, with all 
the charms that accompany her age and sex could 
see the disintegrating process of the next twenty 
years as I have seen them on numerous occasions ; 
if she could see the young man of her dreams skulk 
like a coward, when he was confronted with situa- 
tions where courage was demanded ; if she could see 

76 



DRIFTING WITHOUT A RUDDER 

selfishness dominating his life, vice sapping hi/s 
strength, improvidence dissipating his substance ; she 
would stop to ponder well the consequences of that 
fatal step, which is to place her happiness entirely in 
the keeping of another. Fortunately this picture is 
an extreme one, and the full measure of its unfor- 
tunate development is not often duplicated in actual 
experience, but in a lesser degree the direful conse- 
quences of matrimonial misalliances are everywhere 
to be seen. People are selling out their birthright 
of happiness and satisfaction for apples of the Dead 
Sea which all too soon turn to ashes. 

If our winsome Lenora could have but projected 
her mind twenty years into the future, and seen the 
appalling picture of her home that was to be, faith 
nullified and all the better instincts of life blotted 
out; if she could have seen her children bred in 
selfishness and schooled in dishonor; if she could 
have seen the premature markings of the finger of 
time upon her once comely countenance as she now 
sees them; if she could have seen herself bending 
beneath the weight of years at a time when she 
should have been in the zenith of her glory, I think 
she would have annulled that fatal contract which 
held in its fulfillment such direful consequences. 

Let us drop the curtain now in the hope that the 
77 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 
full measure of her discomfiture has been realized, 
and that the future years may provide some mitiga- 
tion for that situation which has so far been full of 
disappointment and distress. 



78 



CHAPTER VI 

THE GREATER SATISFACTION 

I HAVE issued a special venire. I am calling up 
whom I will of the old familiar group for wit- 
nesses. In the language of scripture I say, "Samuel, 
Samuel, where art thou?" And in my memory there 
comes up the picture of a splendid boy, whose hero- 
ism in the lowly walks of life, and whose magnani- 
mity of soul were beautiful to contemplate. We will 
take only a look into his majestic life as I see it now 
in perspective, and then behold him crossing the 
bar, with all his spiritual canvas stretched to 
the breeze, illuminated with faith and prescience 
supernatural. We will draw from his life and 
frim his death such lessons of philosophy as 
they suggest, and open our minds, I trust, to 
whatever truth they may indicate. If the story 
of his life and death seems overdrawn, the reader 
must remember that facts are sometimes stranger 
than fiction. 

He was one of those precocious souls, who come 
over the social horizon and display their spiritual 
glory as the comet comes out of the abyss to illum- 

79 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

inate briefly the midnight sky and then recedes into 
the great unknown, leaving only the memory behind 
to fix itself in our consciousness. 

Samuel was the son of a widow, who was left in 
poverty to battle with the world and to provide the 
ways and means of supporting a large group of 
helpless children, and he was the mainstay of the 
family. He was slender of stature, frail and weakly, 
but he had a soul in him that was great and noble. 

Among the men and women who toil there are 
some of the kings and queens of the earth, judged 
by the motives and methods of their lives, and the 
things that in their limited sphere they accomplish. 
I take off my hat to the toiler who works with 
a lofty purpose, no matter how circumscribed the 
sphere in which he is held. The boy who fights 
the battles of a widowed mother and helpless 
brothers and sisters, is a hero, no matter what the 
world may say of his low estate. Capacity he may 
or may not have, but a soul of transcendent nobility 
can never be denied him. 

And this brave lad whom the boys called Sam was 
such a one. As farmer, as sheep-herder, as man of 
all work he toiled incessantly, and every dollar of 
his meagre wages went into the family coffer. He 
was content to go in rags and tatters, to endure 

80 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

hunger and cold and all kinds of privation to main- 
tain the family respectability. He was willing to 
forego schools, to live in the wilderness as a hermit, 
to work winter as well as summer, that the younger 
and more dependent members of the household 
might acquire the rudiments of an education, and 
thus be better prepared to make their way in the 
world. 

Goodness of this kind is not born of precept, is 
not the result of example. It is an inborn quality 
of the soul, a gift from God. Heredity in this case 
had nothing to do with it. The father was a worth- 
less wretch who early forsook the family and became 
a common vagabond, and the mother was quite 
mediocre in her mentality, and was possessed of no 
particular characteristics of mind or soul to dis- 
tinguish her from the humble class to which she be- 
longed. 

Heredity and environment are supposed to be the 
two great factors in the mental make up of people. 
But when we have given full credit to these and 
strained a point to make them fit in with peculiar 
conditions there is still a residuum of characteristics 
unexplained, a birthright from the great unknown 
source of mental power, an endowment direct from 
the hand of the Creator. The appearance of those 

81 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

meteor-like intellects that come sometimes from the 
abyss and project themselves athwart the heavens 
and startle the world, are not the product of environ- 
ment. They are quite the antithesis of that. And 
when we explain them from the standpoint of her- 
edity, and say that they represent mental character- 
istics converging from away back, we draw on our 
imagination for explanations we can by no means 
substantiate. 

Sam was not a reader of books, for his limited 
income and the pressing necessities of his kindred 
forbade the purchase of them. But the great open 
book of nature was his daily instructor, and he read 
from its pages a message simple and direct, untram- 
meled by the phraseology of the pedants. His mind 
was not burdened with a painful Latin nomenclature 
of flowers, but his soul vibrated to the amplitude of 
the daisy and the bluebell and the sweet William 
that grew upon his native heath. The song of every 
bird and the murmur of every brook found a re- 
sponse in his untutored soul. He was kindred to 
everything that is beautiful and harmonious and 
true. 

Who shall say that the world did not have as 
much for him as for the academic folk? Who shall 
call him ignorant who opens his soul to the truth 

82 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

and thrills with every vibration of mellifluous sound 
and harmonious color. What does education do for 
us but to teach us how to appreciate? And if we 
have the instinct of appreciation already with us, 
then nature has anticipated our education and paved 
the way for the higher instruction which deals with 
the generalizations, and establishes the proper cor- 
relation of things. True education establishes its 
foundation on the natural intuitions and develops 
these into the higher processes of thought and emo- 
tion. But the man who has slavishly committed to 
memory the formulae of books and thinks by rote is 
an ignoramous, however high-sounding his title. 
The pedant is at best a copyist, while the man of 
instuition is a real creator. 

The poetic conceptions are common to all those 
minds that appreciate the beautiful things of the 
world. But some have the power to translate them 
into words — to link together in melodious cadences 
those interdependent things which the ordinary mind 
grasps in thought but cannot convey to others be- 
cause of the inability to muster suitable symbols. 
All men are poets in thought; while a limited few 
out of each generation are poets in actual fact. 

And the same thing is true in art. 

The most perfect picture of a landscape is only a 
83 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

symbol, when you think of the real landscape glisten- 
ing with the morning dew, and vibrating with life 
at every tangent. There are many who have the 
aesthetic instinct, and feel the full emotion of such 
things. But a few out of the multitude receive the 
impression with such power that they can repro- 
duce morphology and color with measurable exact- 
ness. And these we call artists. 

For poetry existed before time was, and land- 
scapes were beautiful as ever in the ancient unknown 
aeons when the footprint of man had never been 
upon this earth. I know the rainbow with all its 
glory was here, and the blue dome was covered 
betimes with fleecy clouds, and the cooling showers 
of summer bathed the face of nature while yet the 
only tenants of the earth were animals of an inferior 
sort. For side by side with their bones, preserved 
as fossils in the rocks, we find the unmistakable im- 
print of raindrops, which fell upon the sands of the 
seashore, and became covered with the silt from 
the water to preserve their record for all time. 

We need the poet and the artist, not so much to 
aid us in the present interpretation and appreciation 
of the harmonies of nature, but to preserve these 
things that they may be handed down to generations 
yet unborn, that their accumulated store may become 

84 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

the heirloom of the ages, the crystallized sentiment of 
the world, the collected emotions of all who have 
thrilled and borne record of the thing that stirred 
them. 

Our friend Samuel was just one of those unpre- 
tending simple souls who opened his heart to the 
truth and by instinct translated it into terms of his 
life. He knew the flowers that bloomed upon a 
hundred hills over which he daily drove his master's 
flocks, he knew the song of every bird which carolled 
from the woodland, he was a friend to the wild hare 
and the squirrel, and the multitude of small creatures 
that swarm in the valleys and upon the hills. 
Though he could not give them their proper zoolog- 
ical name, he knew the method of their life and his 
soul went out in sympathy to them. 

But the magnitude of his soul was best seen in the 
family circle, where he did the work of a minister- 
ing angel. 

With the mature judgment of a man of exper- 
ience he reasoned with his mother about ways and 
means, and with all the solicitude of the father of 
a family he made plans for the education and train- 
ing of the younger brothers and sisters. He was 
scrupulously honest and kept the family credit above 
reproach, though sometimes hunger and privation 

85 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

made inroads upon them. He was generous and 
hospitable, though he could ill afford to bestow his 
hard-earned wages for the entertainment of others. 
The old saying that honesty is the best policy is 
wonderfully true. A name for honest dealing is a 
good stock in trade for any man. It has a cash value 
that grows as he grows in financial strength. It is 
an asset in the commercial world that carries its own 
insurance and remains in 'force so long as the posses- 
sor lives. The man who fails to meet his obligation 
when due is a worse enemy to himself than to any- 
body else. The man who thinks he can gain ad- 
vantage by dodging his creditor is like the ostrich 
which, when pursued, hides its head in the 
thicket. Sooner or later you must satisfy every 
obligation you have incurred, or it will abstract from 
your financial potency a tenfold payment. You can- 
not evade the truth. You may seem to parry for a 
time this or that unpleasant obligation, but sooner 
or later you will have to confront it face to face, and 
often you will meet with chagrin and a fallen counte- 
nance what you might have met in the beginning with 
head erect and dignity uncompromised. It is better 
to present to everything and everybody a bold front. 
To meet the truth of every day without trying to 
evade it, to feel the dignity that abides in every soul 

86 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

which has shaken off the groveling things of the 
world and arisen to that stratum of thought where 
truth and purity are the natural elements that sur- 
round us — this is the only condition of life that is 
worth while. 

The countless millions who walk the way of carnal 
gratification have never tasted what real life is. They 
go forth to play with the baubles of the world as 
the child finds amusement in his gew gaws, and 
when the day is ended and the reverie of eventide 
comes, the soul recoils upon itself, and feels all the 
remorse that must follow the contemplation of lost 
opportunity. Wilfully to cut off 'from our life its 
sources of mental and spiritual replenishment, to 
sever ourselves from that natural inflow of the in- 
spiration that is the birthright of us all, is to exclude 
from our life the only part of it that means growth 
and expansion toward a definite end. 

When Satan took Christ to the high mountain and 
showed him all the glory of the world and said, "This 
will I give thee if thou wilt bow down and worship 
me," he spoke a truth that is common in life. Al- 
ways there is before us the two pathways, the carnal 
and the spiritual, the one of ephemerial delights and 
the other of that greater satisfaction which contem- 
plates not only the present hour, but takes in the 

87 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

whole scope of our mental activities here and here- 
after. Each individual interprets the world from one 
of these viewpoints. If the landscape has a message 
of spirituality for me, then in its wonderful com- 
position I see the handiwork of an all-wise Creator, 
and through Him a purpose in my present relation- 
ships. But if I look at it only with the carnal eye, 
it means that my relationship is accidental, and that 
I shall wither and vanish from the earth, and be 
known no more in the midst of these delights, which 
must now minister to the aesthetic tastes of others 
who are aliens and strangers to me. 

But I am forgetting that I am describing the life 
of an actual person, whose experiences brought up 
in my mind all these thoughts. 

Into the little family circle which was defended 
by this brave boy, there came a day of great dis- 
quietude and worry. The shadowing wings of the 
angel of death hovered over them, and seemed 
to mark as its victim him who was the protector and 
guardian of all the rest. For days and days to- 
gether he suffered excruciating pain, and hung in 
the balance between life and death. But always the 
same serenity of spirit was with him, and always 
the same smile of resignation beamed from his 
manly countenance. The family was overwhelmed 

88 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

with the impending- calamity, and stood helpless and 
dumb in the face of their grief. But friends rallied 
from every quarter, and his sickness was the af- 
fair of the whole village. Willing hands were ready 
for every service possible, and no sacrifice was too 
great for the meanest of his friends and neighbors 
to make. 

The denizens of cities can have no idea of that 
fraternal bond which brings people of the smaller 
communities to a unit in a common cause of mutual 
aid; that makes the home of affliction the rallying 
ground for whole towns and whole districts, regard- 
less of age or sex or social distinction. The pure 
democracy of fraternalism is known only to the 
country town. The city has only the aristocratic 
form of it ; and this is so much modified by interests 
and counter interests, by social and commercial dis- 
tinctions, that it loses most of its identity as a co- 
hesive social force. In my experience as physician 
I have many times witnessed that beautiful abandon 
of all self-interest in the cause of others which is 
characteristic of the rural districts, and to me it is 
the nearest approach to the Christ-life of anything 
I have ever known. 

In the precincts of this meagre home the spirit 
of fraternalism suffused itself. Unselfish hands 

89 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

ministered hourly to the comforts of the suffering 
boy. Day after day brought no change for a long 
time. The little assurance that came with the morn- 
ing light was dispelled with the shades of the even- 
ing, and the darkness of each night accentuated all 
the forebodings that kindred and friends were wont 
to indulge in. 

Just why the temperature and pulse and all the 
symptoms of a patient should become so much 
less favorable in the evening than in the morning 
has always been an unsolved problem with the med- 
ical fraternity. Aurora, the goddess of the morning, 
seems to have healing in her wings as she rises from 
the eastern horizon to initiate the activities of a 
newborn day. But the sombre shades of the night 
are depressing to the spirits, and except as they are 
utilized for slumber, bring doubt and discouragement 
to the mind. I believe that much of the change 
in the physical condition of persons in bodily af- 
affliction is due to the psychological effects of light 
and darkness upon them. 

When we see our friends languishing in beds of 
affliction we are wont to ask ourselves, Why should 
there be suffering in the world? why could not the 
Creator who had all things at his disposal have 
ruled out sickness and poverty and vice and all 

90 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

those things that bring down the soul of man in 
humiliation and distress? But for these things this 
earth would be a paradise, and every day a day of 
jubilee to every soul that has received the privilege 
of life. And man instead of a fallen being, grovel- 
ing in the dust of the earth, sinking in his degener- 
acy to a level beneath the brute creation would be 
crowned with honor and dignity and majesty. 

Why does the Utopian dream of the millennium 
have to be postponed in our minds until another 
hypothetical stage of our being shall arise from the 
portals of death to behold a world recreated, when 
we have all the elements of it here with us now? 
And why does the hand of the destroyer strike, 
without mercy, without remorse, without the sem- 
blance of justice at the widow's son, at the mother 
of helpless children, at the brilliant star in the family 
constellation? To all appearances ilt does seem 
that the destiny of individuals, in this world, as 
also the destiny of nations, is left to the caprice of 
blind, unreasoning force which knows neither mercy 
nor justice nor remorse. Human conceptions of 
right and wrong seem to have no place in the great 
world process. 

The stupendous mundane machine seems to put 
men and women through its compartments with as 

91 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

little concern as any other machine deals with inani- 
mate commodities. If by chance an individual falls 
into the gearing and gets ground to powder, it is a 
matter of absolute indifference to the machine. 
Kindred and friends may weep, but the cosmic pro- 
cess deals neither in tears nor smiles. Its grim 
visage is unmoved by any passion, its inexorable 
routine unabated by any mischance. 

Is there any meaning in this apparent neglect on 
the part of nature of the interests of its most vital 
elements ? 

I shall answer this pertinent question by relating 
an old legend, which comes down to us from the 
Dark Ages a reflex of mediaeval mental processes, 
which we can disregard as a story, but which has 
in it a truth most vital in its application. 

Once upon a time an angel came down from 
heaven to sojourn with a hermit. The two went 
forth on a journey together, depending for their 
sustenance on the charity of the people they should 
meet. At the close of the first day they were enter- 
tained by a stranger, who took them to his home, 
spread before them a sumptuous repast, and lavished 
upon them every attention his household could 
furnish. The lord of the house was particularly en- 

92 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

thusiastic in his eulogy of a certain goblet of great 
beauty which had been presented to him by an 
eminent man and which he prized above all other 
things in his possession. After the dinner was 
served the two guests were conducted to a sleeping 
apartment and lay down for the night. 

When everything was quiet they rose. The angel 
seized the beautiful goblet and, concealing it under 
his robe, they made their way off stealthily and be- 
took themselves again to the country road. 

The next night they were entertained in the city 
by another wealthy man, who vied with his predeces- 
sor in bestowing hospitality upon them. 

Into this household there had been born recently 
a son, who was the applet of their eye because he 
came to a childless home and was the last hope of 
the family lineage. When all retired to slumber, 
the two guests rose again, and the angel felt his 
way through the room to the cradle and strangled 
the child to death. Then they went out into the 
darkness and made their escape. 

The just mind of the hermit rose in rebellion at 
such apparent injustice. With difficulty he re- 
strained himself from complaining aloud, but he 
said, "It is an angel of God, and surely the ways 
of the Lord must be right." So he bided his time 

93 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

and journeyed onward with his celestial companion.' 

As they were crossing the river on a narrow bridge 
a stranger met them in the middle of the stream, 
whom the angel accosted and of whom he inquired 
the way. The man turned to point out the direc- 
tion of the road, and the angel pushed him into the 
water, and he was drowned. 

With much difficulty the hermit restrained himself 
from complaining, for his companion seemed to de- 
light in base ingratitude, and did things which out- 
raged humanity and violated every law of justice 
and propriety. But he said, "It is an angel of God, 
and surely there must be righteousness in his ac- 
tions." 

Then they journeyed into a drear wilderness. 
Darkness came on, and the bleak wind bore in upon 
them, and they were in much distress. In the dis- 
tance they saw a light toward which they made 
their way in the hope that they would find entertain- 
ment. But the man of the house was gruff and 
uncouth and treated them very harshly. He sent 
them into his pig sty to sleep and refused to give 
them even a crust of bread to satisfy their hunger. 

In the morning when they came forth from their 
miserable bed chamber, the angel accosted their host 
and thanked him most kindly for the entertainment 

94 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

and presented him with the golden goblet which he 
had purloined from their first friend. The indigna- 
tion of the hermit knew no bounds, and he railed 
on his companion vehemently. "Every person," he 
said, "who has treated us kindly you have rewarded 
with base injustice and horrible cruelty, and the 
only one who has been harsh and brutal you outdid 
yourself to fawn upon and presented him with a 
princely reward. This is contrary to every principle 
of justice and humanity, and must be wrong even 
though an angel from the throne of grace stands 
voucher for it." 

Then the angel chided his friend. "You are 
passing the judgment that mankind in general 
passes without full knowledge of the thing you 
are judging. Listen to me and I shall explain in 
simple terms the paradoxes which have caused you 
such disquietude. Then you will perceive that the 
judgments of God are righteous though they may 
seem an absolute contradiction to the judgments 
of finite minds. 

"The man from whom we took the golden goblet 
had been temperate in all his ways, and had passed 
the crisis of his life in safety, but this beautiful gift 
of a valued friend was such an important object to 
him that he filled an(^ refilled it with wine, and was 

95 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

on the high way to become a drunkard. By taking 
this temptation out of his life we stopped the down- 
ward process that had him in its tow, and sent him 
forth to reassert the majesty of manhood undebased 
by vicious habits. 
"The man who was parent to the child we destroyed 
had been noted for his charity. He had given of his 
goods without stint to the poor and the needy, and 
all men blessed him for his broad humanity and his 
kindness to all who were unfortunate. But when 
this son came into the home that had been childless, 
the desire to bestow upon him all the advantages 
that were fitting to the heir of a great household and 
a landed estate, became the absorbing passion of his 
life. All his humane ideas were narrowed down to 
this one individual, and his soul began to shrivel up. 
By removing from his life this one great impedi- 
ment we opened once again the floodgates of his 
soul, and permitted the inflow of that great tide of 
humanity, without which his life would have shrunk 
to a vanishing point and disappeared from the active 
world. 

"The man whom we pushed from the bridge was 
just nearing the climax of a plot which would have 
reddened his hands with the blood of his fellow- 
man and blighted soul and body alike. By thus de- 

96 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

priving him of his own life, we rescued his name 
from the ignominy of a murderer, and his soul from 
a crime that could not be forgiven in this world 
nor in the world to come. The man who lived in 
the wilderness was one of those unfortunate indi- 
viduals who become pessimistic and array them- 
selves against society, and swear vengeance against 
all men. He had known humanity only from the 
side of selfishness and injustice, and he could not 
understand that men could act from motives that 
look to the benefit of others. And our showing him 
an example of magnanimity will arouse the latent 
humane instinct that lies slumbering in every 
breast and send him forth with a new resolve to 
cultivate unselfishness and bestow benefits upon 
others. Society itself is responsible for much of the 
sordid selfishness of its individual units. Every day 
we meet those unfortunate victims of injustice and 
cruelty who have lost all faith in their fellow men 
and who have reverted to the old law of an eye 
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But when by 
chance they discover that there are people in the 
world who can act from high humanitarian motives, 
they have a new birth, and begin to walk in new- 
ness of life. If we appeal to the God in people it 
will respond to us, but if we appeal to the baser 

97 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

impulses of their life we will get response in kind." 
So the apparent injustice of the angel was justi- 
fied and the hermit perceived that his judgment was 
based upon half knowledge. And so we all sit in 
judgment upon the decrees of Deity and try to 
resolve with finite minds what the Infinite mind has 
planned, and we do not understand that our out- 
look on the case comprehends only one tangent while 
the eye of God takes in the whole circumference. 

The chastening hand of sickness and adversity 
comes to us for a purpose, though we do not grasp 
its meaning. 

"All nature is but art, unknown to thee ; 
All chance, direction which thou canst not see ; 
All discord, harmony not understood, 
All partial evil, universal good." 

The royal metal of character is refined only in the 
crucible of affliction. The easy, pleasurable way of 
life is the way that limits our development. Wealth 
and ease and luxury are conspirators against the 
soul. In the last analysis they are most cruel things. 
"God takes out of a man's soul what he puts into 
his coffers." 

Into this lowly home we are describing sickness 
and the shadowing of the wings of the destroying 

98 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

angel had come for a purpose. But it is hard for 
us to see and comprehend the meaning of it when 
it is the widow's son that is stricken. Much less 
easy was it for those who depended on his daily toil 
for the necessaries of life. It seemed that God had 
forsaken them. In vain they prayed for mercy, 
but the relentless grip of the destroyer abated not 
for a moment. Day by day the suffering boy grew 
weaker, and the faith of his kindred and friends grew 
less. But the resolution of his soul was undimin- 
ished, and the clear light of his eye flickered not for 
one instant. A smile of appreciation greeted every 
little attention that was bestowed upon him, and 
never a cross or harsh word escaped his lips, though 
his suffering at times was excruciating. "I am 
not afraid to die," he was heard to say, "but I do 
desire so much to live for the sake of my mother 
and my brothers and sisters." Through all these 
dreary hours of pain and distress he was making 
plans for the future, and never dreaming of anything 
but the happy consummation of them in a few 
days, when this tide of sorrow should have ex- 
pended its force and recede. 

One glorious morning dawned on this home of 
affliction, and for a time their hopes went skyward 
in the change it seemed to bring. It was the early 

99 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

spring time. The song of birds was in the air, 
the sweet perfume of flowers was carried by every 
breeze, and the sun poured over the eastern hills 
a flood of golden light. And our patient little Sam- 
uel seemed to partake of the spirit of the hour, and 
his soul thrilled with the glory of that morning carni- 
val. As the anxious group of relatives and friends 
sat in silence around the humble cot, his eye beamed 
with a splendor unwonted, and he said: 

"This is such a beautiful world we live in, and 
you people have been so much Hike ministering 
angels. I cannot imagine paradise in any better set- 
ting than this. I do so wish to live, but if it's 
God's will that I should go hence, I have no fear. 
My conscience is void of offense. I shall only 
regret the parting, which will be but for a time. 
I do not guess, but I know that we shall, meet again 
upon that other shore. God has removed all doubt 
from my mind. The veil is rent, and I can see 
clearly the transformation from the world of ma- 
terial things to the world of spirit. The peace that' 
is in my soul transcends all words. I do not suffer 
now. A spirit has come over me that dispels all 
fear and pain." 

The morning hour passed away with our young 
friend in this state of mind. He was not sure, but he 
100 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

thought the hour of his departure was near at hand. 

Our mother Nature which seems to know no pity 
in her dealings with the children of men is yet more 
merciful than we are wont to believe. She sends 
her well adjusted dose of carbonic acid gas whirling 
through our veins to smother the pains of dissolution 
that otherwise would be so terrible. She deals in 
mental states that come as the antidote of fear and 
worry. She sends streamers of spiritual light as 
emissions from beacons upon the golden shore to 
guide our feet over the dark river. Many times, 
as physician, have I beheld this dawn of the spirit 
in the gathering gloom of the death chamber. It is 
not, in my interpretation, the accentuated twilight 
of the passing day; it is not the manifestation of 
mental processes set in motion by the poisoning of 
brain cells as some have maintained, but it is the 
opening up of a new mental condition, the outlook 
upon the universe from the spiritual viewpoint. 

I look into the cold face of science in vain for 
a parallel consolation. To say that this is an ecstatic 
mental state resulting from irritated brain cells is 
an easy way to dispose of it, but when we demand 
the proof of such an assumption, science has nothing 
to offer. The relationship of certain mental states 
to certain conditions of the brain and of the 

101 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

circulating blood has a basis of plausibility in the 
delirium of fever, in the dethroned judgment of 
alcoholism and other drug poisonings, in the mental 
hebetude of uremia. But it is pure presumption 
to conclude from this that all unusual mental pro- 
cesses have a like explanation. This is in the main a 
matter of conjecture and not a matter of proof. 
Science as such deals with the physical and ignores 
completely the spiritual. What she can not dem- 
onstrate with microscope, with crucible or chemical 
reagents, she rules out of existence. But why, I 
ask, should men of the scientific outlook be so anx- 
ious to gainsay the spiritual counterpart of this 
physical existence? Is not the phenomenon of life 
more easy of explanation with the assumption of an 
indwelling spirit? It certainly changes the whole 
meaning of life when we regard it as a perpetual 
thing, and not as an accidental combination of certain 
elements and certain forces. 

I have sat by many a death bed and watched the 
ebbing tide of life. The vital processes, though 
modified and retarded, continue uninterrupted until 
a great climacteric act of the respiration brings all 
the life phenomena at once to a dramatic ending. 
The demand for oxygen, which is so immanent and 
constant, grows yet more pressing as the respiratory 

102 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

center gives up the struggle, and then, as if in one 
great effort to regain itself, the rhythm becomes 
lengthened, all the voluntary and involuntary muscles 
are called into action, and two or three times the 
lungs are filled to their limit. Then suddenly all 
manifestations of life cease, and the process of 
disintegration of tissue rapidly sets in. 

Now, I ask my material friends what is it that 
has happened? Here is the machine equipped with 
all its wonderful physiological apparatus ; the eye 
with its crystalline lens, the heart with its perfect 
hydraulic construction, the muscles all connected 
up by telegraphic lines with the conscious centers 
above, ready to respond to the minutest bidding of 
the will; the brain, that wonderful dynamic, which 
is ready to put out not only orders for physical ac- 
tion, but to generate poetry, music, oratory, art. 
But the power that controlled all these activities has 
abdicated. Something has gone, which, but a mo- 
ment ago, gave forth its will, and maintained itself 
an individual unit in the great panorama of life. 

As I write these lines I see from my window an 
electric car standing idle on the track. It has 
in its make up all the machinery of locomotion, and 
could move through space at a great rate of speed. 
But it stands motionless. Presently I see the trolley 

103 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

released and permitted to make contact with a wire 
above. Then suddenly all the machinery that has 
been motionless begins to stir, and the vehicle ful- 
fills the purpose of its creation by carrying pass- 
engers many miles through the city. 

And I am persuaded that there is a direct anal- 
ogy between the electric machine and the human 
body. These wonderfully organized cells are po- 
tentialities, but not physiological factors, unless 
some extraneous force takes hold of them, and that 
extraneous force manifests volition, intelligence, 
emotion. 

The harp has all the elements in its construction 
for the production of harmonious musical combina- 
tions of sound. But if there be not a harpist to 
play upon it, it will be silent forever. Of its own 
accord it cannot produce music. But when the skilled 
finger of a musician sweeps over its strings, they 
vibrate with melody and harmony sublime. 

They who have said that the brain cells secrete 
thought as the liver cells secrete bile have not given 
serious consideration to the indwelling intelligent 
force that directs mental activity, and that manifests 
itself most certainly when it makes its tragic exit. 

Biochemistry, I admit, is a vital physiological 
factor, and is indispensable to the life of each in- 

104 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

dividual cell as it is the aggregate of cells that go 
to make up the body. But biochemistry is only an 
abstract thing if there be not the indwelling life 
principle to direct and appropriate its occult pro- 
cesses. And this life principle, call it spirit or what 
you will, is the extraneous thing that comes into 
the human machine and starts its functions and 
directs its processes to a purposeful end. Biochem- 
istry is an indispensable part of the life process, 
but it is not life itself, any more than is the oxida- 
tion of tissues, the assimilaton of food, or any 
other chemical or physiological process. He who 
ignores the spiritual corollary to this physical or- 
ganism is driven to a lamentable pass to explain 
things that are very simple to the mind that admits 
the indwelling spirit. The materialist is a credulous 
individual. He is fanatical to a theory, and will 
hold himself to many absurdities to brace up his 
preconceived idea of things. When we come down 
to the last analysis of things there is no difference 
between the man of fanatical preconceived ideas 
of science, with a determination to bend everything 
to fit in with his theory and the man of fanatical 
religious views who is willing to go to the same 
extremity to maintain his position. The fact that 
one labels his fanaticism "science" and the other 
105 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

"religion" makes no difference in actual principle. 
These two kinds of men are of the same breed. The 
great defect in their lives is their unwillingness to 
follow the truth. They are the men who have 
retarded the progress of the world in all ages by 
their intolerance. They are the men who have 
made thumbscrews in the days of intellectual thrall- 
dom and lighted fires to burn heretics. 

The passing of one so near to the heart of the 
village was naturally an event of greatest concern 
to every one. Eager faces were watching for every 
token, and interrogating every neighbor about the 
events of the sick room. The whole village was 
keyed up to the highest pitch of expectancy, and 
moved with a common impulse of solicitude. 

The long slanting shadows of the evening were 
falling eastward, and the rays of the departing 
sun were streaming through the windows of that 
room of affliction, when a sudden change came over 
the countenance of the dying boy. He had been 
dull and apathetic for some considerable time. Na- 
ture was instilling into his blood her accumulating 
doses of carbonic acid and gas to benumb the 
sensitive nerves and quiet the fears of dissolution. 
But consciousness, which had ebbed and flowed, but 
which was now far out to sea, seemed to return with 

106 



GREATER SATISFACTION 

a sudden surge and his face lighted up with a glory 
sublime. It was the last full flow of the tide of life 
before its final recession, and in its effulgence every 
faculty seemed to be keyed up to its highest tension. 
There was majesty in that countenance as he sur- 
veyed the group of kindred and friends around him, 
and beckoned for each in turn to come and grasp 
his hand. 

"I know that I must go," he said in tones of sad- 
ness. "I know that I must sleep in the grave, but we 
shall meet again sometime, somewhere. Goodbye. 
God bless you all. I am completely happy. I move 
out o [ f the dark valley into the light, and my pathway 
is clear before me." 

A fixity came over his countenance, and the glory 
of that passing moment wrought itself into his 
physical being, and the majesty of life became the 
majesty of death. 

I am free to admit that these spiritual premoni- 
tions are not the customary thing when people come 
to the last great struggle. Most of us will fall 
asleep only when our strength is all exhausted in 
the fight for life, and have no idea that the hour 
of our departure has arrived. Comparatively few 
people know that they are really dying, when the 
outgoing tide lifts them over the bar. Some aged 
107 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

people I have known who were really weary of the 
struggle and glad to get out of it.; and some un- 
fortunates who had suffered so long that they wel- 
comed anything that would eliminate the pain from 
their sensitive nerves. But the average man fights to 
the last ditch, and never surrenders. 

Once in a while, particularly in precocious youth, 
we meet with that spiritual temperament which 
seems to have prescience of the world that is to 
come, and which plunges into the great mystery with 
all the confidence that perfect knowledge of its 
meaning could give. Some might explain this as 
a simple psychological condition, which it really 
is, but to my mind it is not born of engendered 
poisons from within, but of the great all compre- 
hending spirit from without, which sees things in 
their true relationship and manifests its perfect 
knowledge through these sensitive instruments. 
These transparent souls are en rapport with those 
finer spiritual emanations to which the ordinary 
individual is quite unresponsive. And now we will 
let the curtain fall upon the sad ending of this beau- 
tiful life, and leave him, we hope, to rest in peace, 
and to live in the memory of all who knew him and 
appreciated his worth and gained admonition from 
his poetic ending. 

108 



CHAPTER VII 

A STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED 

THE special venire knows no limitation in the 
space it embraces. I go far afield and sum- 
mon now a witness who has drifted far away from 
the old mooring'. For convenience we will call him 
Richard, and we shall ask him to take the stand, and 
give forth the evidence he has in his possession. We 
shall swear him in to tell the truth, the whole truth, 
and nothing but the truth. 

The family circle to which Richard belonged was 
one of those rolling circles which moves from place 
to place and sees opportunity only in the distance. 
His father belonged to a type of men we are all fa- 
miliar with, who see their chances of success always 
in some other locality than that which they now oc- 
cupy. They are often like the dog which dropped its 
piece of meat to grab at the shadow. They enter with 
much enthusiasm into each new venture as though it 
were the one opportunity of their life, but the mo- 
mentum soon begins to slacken, and presently comes 
to a standstill. 

So much effort is expended to no purpose by fail- 
109 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

ing to follow up the advantage it brings that they 
always fall short of success. Next thing to work, 
the most important of all factors in the life of men 
who succeed, is pertinacity. You have to put your- 
self down like an axis of the earth and stick, if you 
ever intend to accomplish anything. The fitful man 
is as incompetent as the lazy man. Intermittent 
effort accomplishes little more than no effort at all. 

After many ventures in various localities this 
family did finally settle down to something like per- 
manence in one of the larger towns of their native 
state. They acquired some land holdings and built 
a home in an outlying part of the town. The older 
members of the family found occasional employment 
in the various activities of the community, and other- 
wise assisted the father in tilling the little plat of 
ground they had purchased. Some degree of com- 
fort and respectability seemed finally to have fallen 
to their lot. 

Our friend Richard was one of the younger mem- 
bers of the family. He attended the public school, 
and was known as a good student, though there was 
no indication at that time of anything out of the or- 
dinary in his mental make-up. 

There was a little girl of the town whom for con- 
venience we shall call Mary as we detail some of her 
110 



THE REJECTED STONE 

life's experiences. She was the friend and boon 
companion of Richard. As children they played to- 
gether, as students they worked together, and in all 
the social activities of the junior element of the com- 
munity they seemed to gravitate toward each other. 
As they grew into their 'teens, and began to feel the 
hidden motion of the soul which stirs within every 
manly and womanly breast with the transition from 
childhood into adolescence, the attachment grew 
stronger. No word had been spoken. Indeed, they 
seemed to take each other for granted. No avowal 
could add to the compact which nature had arranged 
between them. From the first they seemed to un- 
derstand each other perfectly. 

Richard had grown in favor among the people of 
the town. He manifested a degree of intellect and 
a magnanimity of soul which were quite unusual 
among the boys of his age and station. His elder 
brothers, and even the father, began to be jealous 
of the prestige he had attained. The halo which 
gathered around his life seemed to them to be a re- 
flection upon the dim background of the family set- 
ting. 

Woe be to the one who ever dares to raise his 
head above the common level of his fellows. The 
greatest of all the offenses we can commit against 
111 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

our associates is to outstrip them in the struggle 
for preferment. All other offenses may be forgiven, 
but this is the sin unpardonable. 

Richard was employed in a large mercantile estab- 
lishment of the town. His employers placed every 
confidence in him, and made him the custodian of 
their safe with all its contained treasure. He was 
rapidly becoming the dominant factor of the firm, 
although he was still only in his 'teens. His was 
indeed a career of much promise for the future, 
judged by all external and internal conditions. 

How little we know of the mischances that lurk in 
the way of budding, developing careers, in a mo- 
ment's time reversing the whole course of events 
and bringing discredit to the one who seemed worthy 
of all confidence. 

One morning when the safe was opened it was 
found that a considerable sum of money was missing. 
Suspicion knows but little discrimination of proba- 
bilities or possibilities when it is directed against one 
who has excited envy among his fellows. When 
people wish the thing to be true which they suspect, 
everything is colored to fit in with their explanation. 

And indeed the facts did seem to point toward our 
friend Richard as the one who must know something 
about the theft, for he was sole custodian of the 
112 



THE REJECTED STONE 

combination of the safe. But he stoutly protested 
his innocence, although he had no explanation to 
make. 

And now developed one of those crises in the life 
of this boy which sometimes in a greater or less 
degree must come to every individual. To see our 
friends aligning themselves either for or against us 
in the face of some great dramatic episode in our 
affairs ; to see those whose fidelity we have banked 
upon jumping headlong at the conclusion that we 
have gone wrong, and that it is their duty to draw 
the deadline of social ostracism against us, — these 
are the experiences which reveal to us the appalling 
instablity of human character. Not infrequently 
the people who take the most pronounced stand 
against us are the very ones who have most willingly 
accepted favors at our hands. They have eaten of 
the substance we bestowed and then turned to 
rend us. 

Our Richard found himself facing a grave situa- 
tion. He was placed under arrest and put through 
the terrible ordeal of an investigation of his sup- 
posed guilt. The friends of former days, every one, 
deserted without giving him the benefit of a doubt. 
His father and his brothers were among the first to 
denounce him. Even the little Mary was carried 
113 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

away in the popular clamor and listed herself with 
those who were against him. In all the community 
there was only one voice raised in his defense, and 
that was the voice of his mother. 

Among the most beautiful of all human relation- 
ships is that between mother and son. All other 
bonds are variable and liable at any time to be sun- 
dered, but the loyalty of a mother's heart is the one 
constant, undeviating thing in human character. It 
knows no limitation by prosperity or adversity. The 
blighting spell of misfortune has no power over it. 
It follows afar off to the prison wall, to the gallows, 
to the place of crucifixion, and blots out the offense 
which preceded them by the multitude of its com- 
passionate tears. The mother's devotion is meas- 
ured in terms of necessity and expands itself to the 
full requirement of those who have a valid claim to it. 

Apart from the fact that Richard was custodian 
of the key to the safe, there was nothing to indicate 
that he was the culprit. The investigation produced 
no evidence to warrant legal proceedings, and so he 
was acquitted. But the community had constituted 
itself a jury, and adjudged him guilty without a 
hearing. What was he to do, what could he do 
under the circumstances ? He knew that he was in- 
nocent of the charge, but to convince people whose 
114 



THE REJECTED STONE 

minds are inflamed with prejudice is a hopeless task. 
If he were to flee, his enemies would use that as a 
convincing proof of his guilt ; if he were to remain, 
all doors would be closed against him; and the vin- 
dication which comes by honest effort would be for- 
ever denied him. Besides, he would be ostracized 
and obliged to walk the streets of the town, where 
all his kindred and former friends resided, in humilia- 
tion and disgrace. The consciousness of his own 
innocence was a great aid to him in the decision. A 
soul unsullied is bold to assert its inalienable rights 
in the face of all kinds of aspersion. It is only the 
guilty coward who cringes before the clamorous 
multitude. And so Richard reached his conclusion 
by that intuition which is born of the fearlessness 
of honesty. He went to the officers and told them 
where he could be found if any question arose re- 
quiring his presence. In another more friendly 
clime he would work out his destiny, and when he 
was vindicated he would come back to show them 
how they had misjudged him, and how cruel their 
verdict had been which robbed him of his honor, the 
most priceless asset of any human soul. 

With one fond caress for the little mother who 
had stood so nobly by him, he went forth into the 
world to fight his battles alone. 
115 



■H 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

He knew not what his vocation was to be, but he 
had one big, dominating thought which impelled him 
onward day by day, and that was that he must make 
good, and come back to victory where he had met 
with apparent defeat. 

If we could analyze the lives of men who have 
made a big success of their calling, we would find 
that nearly always there is some great impelling 
motive back of them. Most often it is a love affair. 
In the great masterpieces of Raphael there is one 
countenance which always appears. Fornarina, the 
lover, wrought herself into the fabric of his dreams. 
In literature, the same unmistakable portraiture re- 
veals the hidden spring which has impelled onward 
to the highest attainment authors who might other- 
wise have been unknown. The "Inferno" without 
Beatrice as a redeeming angel, would perhaps never 
have been produced. It is the dream children of 
our emotions and not of our imagination which at- 
tract the attention of the world. The story which 
is written in the life blood of the author is the one 
that will live. 

The man who goes forth from the land of his 
nativity with the burning remembrance of unkind- 
ness heaped upon him by those who ought to have 
been his friends, has perhaps the greatest motive of 

116 



THE REJECTED STONE 

all to make good. I have no patience with the man 
who absents himself for years from his native town 
and then comes sneaking in through the back streets 
in the garb of a tramp. Unless I could come in with 
the dignity and honor of a respectable citizen I 
would remain away forever. 

In a city far away Richard took up his abode and 
began life anew with one great resolve forever pres- 
ent in his mind. 

One burning desire which dominated all other 
things and incorporated itself into the fabric of the 
air castles he was wont to build. He would fight for 
success, but not the success which satisfies the or- 
dinary individual. God helping him, he would aim 
at nothing short of a career which would distinguish 
him from all his fellows. 

If we start out with sufficient determination we 
can be almost anything we wish to be. The trouble 
with most people is that they have not got the 
courage to follow up their desires. They have 
wish-bone but not back-bone. Before the indomit- 
able will of man all things must bend if the resolu- 
tion to make them bend is continuous. God is always 
on the side of the man who believes in himself. 

Whether by accident or design I know not, but 
Richard gravitated to an institution which made art 

117 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

work its specialty. There does seem to be an im- 
pelling force back of the real student which acts like 
the magnetism of the mariner's needle, and draws 
him ever toward the centers of learning. I never yet 
saw a young man or a young woman whose soul 
hungered and thirsted for knowledge, but in some 
mysterious manner the way opened up before them, 
and they were permitted to gratify their desires. 
Providence seems to have a really watchful care over 
this class of people, moulding every circumstance to 
fit in with their impelling inclination. 

Richard matriculated in the regular course and 
had the privilege of doing janitor's service to meet 
his expenses. This imposed upon him a handicap 
which made necessary a great amount of energy to 
hold his balance with the young men and young 
women who entered without condition. But he was 
a lover of all things intellectual, and he soon took 
his position as one of the leaders of his class. The 
sons and daughters of wealthy parents who came to 
gratify the family ambition and had no real desire 
to do the thing that was required of them, were soon 
out-distanced by this unfortunate boy who found 
in intellectual pursuits his native element and took 
to the college as the duckling takes to the stream. 

I believe in an aristocracy of brains. Your social 
118 



THE REJECTED STONE 

classification which places in the highest scale people 
possessed of money, often dishonestly acquired or 
accidentally inherited, is absurd and ridiculous. The 
only real wealth in this world of ours is the wealth 
of the soul, and the only real aristocrat is the one 
who has intellect and character. 

Richard did not shine in the smart set who found 
opportunity through the sororities to indulge in 
much social pastime. 

I fear these social excrescences which have grown 
up like a fungus growth in our colleges are getting 
us away from the real issues involved in college 
education. I believe they are consuming time which 
could be devoted with profit to the really serious 
work which the college should require. I believe, too, 
that they are breeding mollycoddles of men and wo- 
men who are trying to substitute tinsel for the royal 
metal of education. I am willing to forego all the 
social advantage they give in the interest of sound in- 
tellectual work. Let a man be the master of his pro- 
fession, and do something worth while, and I will 
risk his social development. The world will teach 
him social forms by the homage it comes to pay to 
his genius, and he will not lack the refinement which 
society expects from the man of a degree. 

Our Richard wore seedy clothes because he could 
119 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

afford no better. He dined on humble fare and lived 
a secluded life, because his meager income demanded 
the greatest economy. But in the seclusion of his 
room, in the silent midnight hours, he was filled and 
thrilled with thoughts and emotions which can be 
comprehended only by those who have the genuine 
instinct of a student. In the dull modelers' clay he 
saw classic profiles rising by the magic of his touch ; 
in the rough marble boulders from the quarry he 
saw sleeping angels which needed but the aid of his 
chisel and mallet to set them free. 

For Richard was a genius. He had found through 
the very buffetings of fate an outlet for the pent-up 
energy of his soul. 

He loved his work so much that such incidental 
things as food and sleep were indulged in grudg- 
ingly only as nature asserted herself and made de- 
mand for them. The moments of his life were as 
precious to him as the coins in the miser's purse, and 
they were counted out with the same precision. 

And this is the really superlative degree of life, to 
find the thing by accident or design which nature 
intended }^ou to do, and then to throw all the energy 
of your soul into the execution of it. Your easy- 
going son of wealthy parentage imagines he has 
found happiness in the social functions of the soror- 
120 



THE REJECTED STONE 

ity and the club, and does not comprehend that the 
real nectar of life is not to be purchased by money 
nor acquired by social preferment. Let the son of 
wealth play with his baubles, then, while the son of 
toil drudges and works. One day the process will 
be reversed, and the stone which was rejected will 
become the head of the corner. God has placed His 
angel with the flaming sword before the temple of 
learning and decreed that none shall enter there 
without giving the password of absolution from the 
frivolous things of the world. 

Some people have said that a genius is always an 
abnormal person, that his peculiar bent is a form of 
mental aberration, that he lacks in all other depart- 
ments of his mentality except in the one which 
manifests his peculiar power. In a future chapter 
of this book there is to be a discussion of the rela- 
tionship of the human machine to the great all- 
pervading source of intelligence. The genius is the 
one who has the power by instinct to develop one 
particular part of his mental machinery to its highest 
possible capacity. In one direction he is almost 
omniscient. He seems to be born with the instinct 
to do a certain thing, as the duckling has the instinct 
to swim in the water. He speaks as one with au- 
thority. 

121 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

Considering the legacy which he leaves to the 
world, we can pardon his eccentricities, and his lack 
of knowledge of practical things, and give him lee- 
way to develop his mental specialty to its highest 
possible degree. He is abnormal in the right direc- 
tion. We live in an age of specialists. Life is too 
short for technical study of many things. If we 
would acquire that degree of efficiency which attracts 
attention we must concentrate our mental energy 
into a small space. 

The genius is not so unmindful of the general 
obligations of his life as we are wont to imagine. 
He may be seclusive ; he may be overshadowed by 
one impelling thought ; he may forget sometimes the 
little social obligations in his pondering of weightier 
things. But he is intensely, divinely human. His 
emotions are developed to the superlative degree. 
Of his kindred and friends he is enthusiastic. 

So far from manifesting any form of insanity, as 
some have imagined, he attacks the problems of life 
in the only sane way, by specializing on one thing 
and bringing all the power of his mentality to a 
focus upon that. Of course, it would not do to have 
a world made up of geniuses. The picture must 
have its background, the jewel must have its setting, 
the gold must have its alloy. And so society has 

122 



THE REJECTED STONE 

adjusted itself so that its purest mind-metal shall 
be tempered in the right proportion with material 
less perishable, if of less intrinsic value, that the 
aggregate may be a combination of stability. The 
alloy itself may have intrinsic value approximating 
the royal metal, and pass current as a very good 
substitute for it in times of scarcity, lacking only in 
the extreme lustre which distinguishes the approx- 
imate from the absolute. The man of talent de- 
velops mental power by dint of hard effort, while 
the man of genius is born with a great measure of 
it already developed, and gives it forth by intuition. 
The man of talent is content to work the fallow soil 
of fields already surveyed, while the man of genius 
sails boldly away from the old boundary lines, and 
seeks virgin continents with unknown possibilities. 
The man of talent revolves in an elliptical orbit 
which can be computed with mathematical certainty, 
while the man of genius goes off on a hyperbolic 
curve, the direction of which no man has computed. 
The members of the faculty were not slow to dis- 
cover the splendid work which was accomplished by 
this unpretending boy, nor the latent possibilities 
which were held in reserve in his peculiar mentality. 
Opportunities were placed in his way to ease the 
struggle for existence which had borne in so un- 

123 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 
mercifully upon his valuable time at the beginning, 
and he was enabled to make an appearance which 
he was not ashamed of. He gathered momentum 
with the fleeting months, and when the day of grad- 
uation came he was rated not only as the leader of 
his class, but as one of the brightest intellects which 
had figured in the annals of that institution for many 
years. A scholarship was awarded him without 
much question as to competitors, which, with the aid 
of a wealthy art patron, who had become interested 
in his promising career, enabled him to go abroad, 
and pursue his studies in Paris. At this mecca of 
American students he soon gained favor, and the 
boldness and originality of his ideas, as expressed 
in modelling clay and marble, attracted much atten- 
tion. He came home loaded with honors to receive 
the congratulations of his former faculty and to 
take up his abode in the environs of the college which 
had given him his start. His fame soon spread far 
and wide, and his studio became the center of a 
wealthy patronage which poured its treasure into 
his coffers, and swelled his bank deposit beyond his 
fondest dreams. 

So much success would have unbalanced the men- 
tality of the average youth, but Richard was a prince 
by nature, and nothing could disturb the equanimity 

124 



THE REJECTED STONE 

of a mind which dwelt in the lofty heights above the 
ordinary human frailties. He remained as simple 
as a child in the midst of adulation which would 
have been overwhelming to most persons. And 
this is the test of a really great soul. The man who 
maintains the simplicity of his life, and greets all his 
friends with the same cordiality after he has received 
the homage of the world, and established himself on 
a financial basis among the opulent, is the man who 
can lay claim to greatness. 

But too often we see the reverse of this. The boy 
who goes away and gets the polish of high school 
or college, comes back to disdain the poor old father 
and mother who have sacrificed everything to make 
possible his education ; and the friends of bygone 
years, who are still living the simple life he was 
born and bred in are looked upon as boors unworthy 
of his attention. The meanness of such a method 
never seems to dawn upon the mind of the one who 
is really guilty of it. 

In the midst of all his prosperity there was one 
thought which dominated the mind of our young 
friend. He had been disavowed by his kindred and 
the associates of the bygone years. He would go 
back to them, and show them how they had mis- 
judged him. He would not be revengeful nor un- 
125 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

kind, he was too big a man to entertain any motive 
of that kind. He would go with the spirit of love 
and forgiveness in his heart to grasp them by the 
hand and return good for evil. 

In the score of years which had sped away since 
his exile many changes had come to the community 
whence he came. The relentless hand of time knows 
neither fear nor favor in its dealings with communi- 
ties. Human hearts are but a commodity to be 
handled by it with indifference. Tears and plead- 
ings are of no avail. The mundane machine grinds 
all things to powder, regardless of intrinsic value. 
Sham and pretense, pride and folly, wealth and 
poverty, the just and the unjust must all go through 
the mill and receive the same treatment. Character 
is the only thing which it will not and can not grind. 
And the most interesting thing in life is to look back 
at the sweep of the years, and recapitulate the drama 
which we saw at its beginning, to turn the kaleido- 
scope round by decades and see the new adjustment. 

And this was the thought which came to Richard 
as he wandered back to the old home. His brothers 
had proved to be incompetent men when they met 
with the stern realities of life. The old farm and 
the roof which had sheltered him were under mort- 
gage, and the bank which held the note was pressing 

126 



THE REJECTED STONE 

for a settlement. His aged parents were driven to 
desperation. Their piteous pleadings were all to no 
purpose, for banking houses are of necessity deaf to 
all appeals for mercy. Theirs is the cold blooded 
letter of the law. They never temper justice with 
mercy. They act out the old dictum of the Scripture, 
"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." They 
demand the uttermost farthing, though hearts may 
break and lives be wrecked in the rendering of it. 
And yet they are a necessary part of our social and 
financial system, and we could not get along without 
them. 

Just as the affairs of this family had reached their 
climax of misfortune and the order was momentarily 
expected which would turn them all out as vaga- 
bonds in the street, Richard, the long lost Richard, 
came unannounced and unexpected, as though Provi- 
dence had sent him to be the deliverer of his people. 
They were filled with amazement at the sight of him 
and stood in fear of his august presence. But his 
kindly, benevolent bearing soon inspired confidence, 
and put them at ease. The amount of the mortgage 
was but an insignificant thing to him, whose reserve 
under judicious management had grown to large 
proportions. He discharged the obligation with as 
much unconcern as a contractor pays off one of his 

127 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

laborers on Saturday night, and handed them their 
reprieve with the air of a princely giver. He 
thanked God that the hour had come when he could 
return good for evil. 

The father and the brothers who had been so loud 
in their denunciation, were glad now to receive ben- 
efits from the one whom they had driven away in 
dishonor, and who bestowed them with a magnanim- 
ity that bore no indication of the emotions which 
were playing within his heart. For the hour when 
we can render service to those who have treated us 
unkindly is the hour of our greatest victory. The 
poor old mother whose loyalty had never been 
shaken looked upon her honored son with that pride 
and satisfaction which only one who is kindred in 
thought and emotion can feel. To her it was the 
hour of the greatest satisfaction of her life. 

Poor little Mary had become very insignificant in 
the affairs of the community. Long before this she 
had laid by the tinsel and the fine gowns which added 
to the attractiveness of her young womanhood, and 
allowed herself to become seedy and disheveled and 
insipid. She had gone entirely out of the public 
thought, and her name would never have been linked 
with that of Richard save for the memories of their 
early infatuation. 

128 



fcflB 



THE REJECTED STONE 

She had married at an early date a young man of 
the town, who was reputed to be handsome but who 
had no other qualification than his good looks to fit 
him for the responsibilities of life. 

Our good mother Nature is perhaps more just 
than we comprehend in her allotments to her children 
of the good things of the world. She compensates 
for deficiencies and puts limitations on excesses in 
her subtle manner, and when we size it all up, there 
is not so much difference after all in the aggregate 
of advantages that fall to the lot of each of us. 
Your one-talent man has a one-talent responsibility, 
your ten-talent man has a ten-talent responsibility, 
and the amount of satisfaction that each gets out of 
life is dependent not so much upon the magnitude of 
his undertaking as it is upon the completeness with 
which he discharges all duties involved. 

He who occupies the whole of his circle will be 
happy, though it is of limited circumference, while 
he who attempts to circumscribe the earth and fails 
to realize his purpose, will die in disappointment. 

Happiness, then, comes from being the master of 
the situation which fate has allotted to us, be it great 
or small. 

And this young man, nameless to us, who had cap- 
tivated our little winsome friend, settled down to 

129 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

the vocation of a delivery man, with a salary so lim- 
ited that the meager home he established for the 
wife and the children who followed after was desti- 
tute of everything but the bare necessities of life. 
He adopted the garb of a vagabond himself, partly 
from necessity and partly from an inborn lack of 
refinement, which asserted itself in every phase of 
his life. Compare these two men, the one the re- 
jected suitor of twenty years ago, who went out 
under a cloud but who had come back crowned with 
every honor, possessed of every advantage which 
wealth and social prestige can give; and the other 
subtending the little circle of a man who delivers 
onions and slices of bacon at the back door of the 
patrons of his firm. Well, I suppose there is some 
satisfaction in being a handsome delivery man, but 
the admiration invoked is not of the kind which re- 
plenishes, the larder or wardrobe of a family whose 
daily requirements are but insufficiently supplied. 

The mistake this young lady made would have an 
element of the ludicrous in it if it were not so terribly 
tragic. Turning back the dial hand of time twenty 
years, we see her standing at the parting of the ways. 
Two roads are before her. One is to lead over a 
stony, barren wilderness, unproductive and uninvit- 
ing ; the other is to lead through vales of beauty and 

130 



THE REJECTED STONE 

over mountains of grandeur, where every comfort 
and every luxury can be had for the asking. She 
did not stop to think; she just made one of those 
mad, impulsive decisions which people sometimes 
make, and the die was cast which fixed her social 
standing for all time. What must she have thought 
when she looked into the countenance of this august 
man with the world at his feet and compared him 
with the slinking coward in the vagabond's garb 
who must by force of circumstances be her lord and 
master for all time. It is the sad old story of Maud 
Muller, which never fails to repeat itself and leave 
its wreck of humanity upon the shoals of time to 
burn out their life-wick in vain regrets for what 
might have been. 

Long before, the last vestige of suspicion had been 
lifted from the name of our friend by the confession 
of the real culprit, who was paying for the penalty 
of many crimes behind prison bars. How wonder- 
fully true to the best interests of life is that old Scrip- 
tural injunction. "Judge not that ye be not 
judged." 

When all the leading people of the community 

came to pay their respects to the one whom they had 

cast out in dishonor, but who had returned to reflect 

upon their town an illumination which was alto- 

131 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

gether beyond their comprehension, he felt that he 
had reached the real climax of his life. 

And here we will let the curtain drop, until we see 
him in perspective once again in the summary which 
brings together all the threads of narrative of my 
theme and merges this grand character into the 
group whose varied experience I trust has rounded 
out and ampified some of the real philosophy of life. 



132 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

I AM going to summon now a witness whose life 
is intimately familiar to me. He shall be the 
last. His testimony is to supplement the rest, and 
will go more into detail. With it I am going to 
submit my case. 

I hope the indulgent reader will catch the drift of 
my purpose and judge charitably of the way the 
evidence is presented. My life's work is not to write 
books. By far the greater part of my time and 
attention is demanded in other directions. But 
through a varied experience of successes and failures 
I have arrived at some very definite ideas as to life's 
duties and obligations. I have known the vindictive 
hate of some people ; I have enjoyed the love and re- 
spect, I trust, of very many more. 

At the age of forty-six I should have learned 
something of the philosophy of life if I ever am to 
learn it. Indeed, it may be a pardonable bit of 
egotism to boast myself a bit of a philosopher. 

Not that I have penetrated very far into the occult 
things of life. Not that I have found positive proof 
133 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

of any theory of my mundane relationships or ex- 
ploited any hypothesis of the great problems of the 
universe. In these things I indulge my guess as 
other people have a right to indulge theirs. But 
rather that I have arrived at the situation where I 
am willing to announce my life open for all truth. 
It takes a long, long time for the average individual 
to gain mastery of his mental machinery to the ex- 
tent that will enable him to make in candor this an- 
nouncement. It is so hard to get away from tradi- 
tional methods in our thought. We have been so 
fearful of trusting our mental processes without the 
limitations that empiricism has held about them. We 
have trembled on the threshold of the temple of free- 
dom, and feared that within its precincts God was 
not to be found. 

I believe that God is everywhere. I open my 
castle wall to the four winds of heaven, and invite in 
everything from the ends of the earth, which comes 
in the name of truth. I am trying in my feeble way 
to show my faith in the truth that comes to me, not 
b} : giving it a mere mental assent, but by incorporat- 
ing it into my life, that I may walk by its light and 
have my footsteps guided by its admonition. Many 
times the lighlj is dim, and I find myself groping in 
the gloaming. Many times, like you, my gentle 

134 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

reader, I lose my way and have to come back to the 
point of departure to find the trail again. But the 
more I try, the more easy my task becomes, and I 
live in the hope that the future may have in store 
for me a more perfect illumination of my pathway, 
so that I shall not be in danger of stumbling and 
falling. Sometimes, like you, I have periods of 
mental exaltation, in which life's duties all come out 
in bold relief. And these moments, these hours of 
inspiration, are the ecstatic periods which make all 
the rest of life tolerable. But for the occasional 
influx of this supermundane intelligence, we would 
be but animals acting out animal instincts. As the 
sunshine so reveals the contour of the valley that 
we can remember to walk through it, safely, even 
after the darkness has come, so an hour of inspira- 
tion carries us safely over days of dullness, when 
the spiritual part of us acts only automatically, and 
our mental processes follow only the old beaten 
track. 

This illumination that comes from above, men 
have tried to imitate by stimulating the brain cells 
with alcohol, morphine, cocaine and other poisons. 
But the folly of such spurious inspiration is soon 
manifest by the havoc that follows in its wake. The 
mental nightmare that succeeds the day of exalta- 
135 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

tion is but an indication of the physical damage that 
has been done, and it only requires repetition to 
bring about complete mental and moral disintegra- 
tion. But I am philosophising myself, when I in- 
tended to put my philosophy into the lives of others. 

For the last of this group of children who played 
the game of chance with the daisy's petals I choose 
another Bible name. We will let him bear the ap- 
pellation of David, memorable from the days of 
Israel's shepherd king. 

Not that there is anything in being named after 
kings or rulers. For often the achievements of peo- 
ple in the humbler walks of life are quite as great 
in kind if not in degree as the deeds of the men 
who beat down armies and lift up thrones. And 
this same David knew something of the way of 
conquest on a modest scale, as the pages of his 
little book will show. He met with difficulties that 
seemed insurmountable, but each in turn was con- 
jured away by the magic spell of will. He made 
plans that seemed to his kindred and friends im- 
possible of realization, but to their amazement, 
things seemed to adjust themselves in line without 
an effort, and the impossible came to pass. 

David was born in a little village. He worked on 
his father's farm from the earliest years he can re- 

136 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

member. His father was one of those strenuous 
workers who never tire themselves, and who cannot 
comprehend that other people on account of their 
tender years or physical incapacity might tire. Many 
times the little hapless boy found himself astride of 
a horse miles from his home going to the wheat field 
to irrigate long before the break of day, and he 
made piteous appeals to his eyes by continuous rub- 
bing to keep them from closing automatically. And 
often he had two or three hours of work to perform 
in the hay field before he could have any breakfast. 

To this day a thrill goes through the mind of 
David the man when he hears the cricket's evening 
song, because it brings back the recollection of eve- 
nings when twilight faded into darkness, while he 
bent beside his father as a boy and carried the bun- 
dles of wheat into shocks and raked the stubble 
where they lay. 

The carnival of the crickets can be appreciated by 
those only who have heard their shrill crescendo 
which reaches its climax as the last ray of light falls 
from the western sky. To this day the song of the 
meadow lark brings back to David a flood of mem- 
ories from the first dawn of consciousness upon his 
mind. The liquid melody that filled the air with its 
vibrations, and came with a never ceasing repetition 

137 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

spontaneously from the heart of this little golden- 
breasted optimist, as it perched upon the fence, or 
soared high overhead, had in it admonition, and in- 
spiration and faith and courage. The meadow lark 
lists himself as the ally and friend of all those who 
toil in the open air, and he throws all the energy of his 
soul into the effort to furnish entertainment for them. 

Another friendly visitor to the new-plowed field 
was the bluebird. His mode of entertainment was 
not by song, but by a peculiar habit of poising in 
the mid air, and surveying the field from this vantage 
point in quest of worms and larval insects which the 
plow had dislodged from their winter abode. 

The little David had a friendly acquaintance with 
all the birds. He knew the mode each had of build- 
ing its nest, and he pondered the mystery that was 
going on in the little speckled eggs, as the mother 
bird gave out the warmth of her own breast to hasten 
onward the miracle that she was producing by the 
magic spell of her instincts. He was familiar with 
the eloquent appeal of widely opened mouths as little 
downy fledglings importuned the passing stranger 
for food. He knew the hazardous hanging of the 
blackbird's nest, always over the running brook, and 
the terrible fate that sometimes overtook its imma- 
ture inmates when they crawled over the edge. He 
• 138 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

knew the nesting place of the mourning dove, and 
often saw its two white eggs burst open at the end 
and deliver their downy strangers into the little bird 
home. . 

The instinct of this little boy was always humane. 
He never took advantage of the weak things of na- 
ture to do them harm. He sometimes mingled his 
tears with the piteous appeals of the parent birds 
when some calamity had overtaken their immature 
progeny. He sometimes made captives of the birds 
as other boys do, but the thought of their imprison- 
ment was always painful to him, and soon the hu- 
mane instinct impelled him to open the doors and 
set them free. 

And David was an unfriended boy whom none of 
his kindred could comprehend. His soul was like 
an Aeolian harp which vibrated to every wood note 
and thrilled with every breath of sentiment. His 
love for flowers amounted to an overwhelming pas- 
sion. The warm spring days often found him wan- 
dering alone over the hills that flanked his native 
village. He sought the red bells and the pinks and 
the mountain daisies in their sequestered spots, 
where their brilliant hues made contrast with the 
gray landscape, and where their perfumed breath 
gave fragrance to the passing breeze. The larkspur 

139 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

and the honeysuckle, and the mountain mosses and 
the sweet williams were all listed among his favor- 
ites. To see these beautiful forms spring sponta- 
neously from the earth untrammeled by the hand of 
man ; to think of their seeds falling from the lap of 
the wandering winds, and pushing their delicate 
rootlets down into the dull earth to extract pigment 
for the gorgeous corolla, and nectar for the bee, and 
fragrance for the passing stranger — all this was such 
a manifestation of the spontaneous power of nature, 
such an exhibit of the occult intellect and sentiment 
back of this phenomenon of life always brought a 
thrill to the mind of young David. 

He looked up at the rainbow, and wondered at 
the grace of its curve and the brilliance of its colors, 
and tried in vain to imagine the reason why it should 
stretch itself so beautifully across the summer sky. 
Years afterward, when he learned the laws of optics, 
and knew how the sunlight was bent by refraction 
and reflection in the rain drop until it was separated 
into its primary colors and thrown back in lurid 
vibrations at a certain angle with the eye, his ques- 
tion was answered, and the explanation brought into 
his soul a thrill of delight which seemed to lift his 
feet from the earth. 

He threw out the eternal question-mark before 
140 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

everything in heaven and earth, and pondered much 
over the possible explanation of the phenomena of 
nature he saw all around him. He was denied in 
a great measure the companionship of other children, 
and sought an outlet for his soul's emotions in his 
contact with nature. The music of the babbling 
brook and the sigh of the summer breezes were 
articulate with language that seemed to come from 
the great abyss — that seemed to bear a message of 
boundless space and endless duration of years. The 
wild crash from the black thunder cloud seemed to 
be a token from the great reserve of dynamic forces, 
which stand as the background of all these mundane 
phenomena. The snows of winter and the showers 
of summer were manifestations of that kindly Provi- 
dence which spreads the bounties of the earth be- 
neath the feet of all his creatures. 

But when the life of this pensive child was thrown 
open to the world of books, there came a new dis- 
pensation into his career. How he loved them only 
they can tell who have revelled in the same passion. 
Long before he had learned to read, his father one 
day brought the old National series of text books 
into their home, and the thrill that went through the 
mind of the boy at the sight of them is remembered 
to this day. 

141 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

Simply to hold them in his hands and look at them 
brought a certain satisfaction which whiled away 
hours of time. 

David, the little ungainly David, soon out-dis- 
tanced all the boys and girls of the village school. 
One of the greatest victories of his life came when 
he stood up, a little ragamuffin urchin with thread- 
bare trousers and bare feet, in the spelling match, 
and put to rout all the students, great and small, of 
the whole establishment and stood unmatched alone. 

But those same students, like young people in 
general, were slow to read the writing on the wall. 
They failed completely to grasp the significance of 
such a demonstration, and still made of David a 
social outcast, and threw him back on his own re- 
sources for entertainment, an entertainment which 
was easy to provide now since books had come into 
his life. His own reticent disposition was no doubt 
in some measure responsible for his social ostracism, 
and a certain pride which drew the line at being 
rated at anything less than par value. If people 
wished to discount him in the least and place him at 
a social level below where he belonged, he simply 
refused to deal with them, and that was the end of it. 

The midnight hour often found him bending over 
a favorite volume, or pondering the solution of a 

142 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

mathematical problem. Often, too, his father 
ascended the stairs to drive him to bed when he had 
become utterly oblivious to the flight of time. He 
was a gormandizer of books, and read every volume 
that came his way. He studied algebra and geom- 
etry and higher arithmetic with nothing but his own 
intuitions and his text books to guide him, and as he 
followed the plow or scattered the seed wheat over 
the fallow field, the principles of Euclid were re- 
volving in his brain and finding solution. He read 
history and fiction and poetry with that indiscrim- 
ination which results from having no one to select 
for us or to point out the way whereby we can make 
our own selection. He read and pondered his Bible 
with all that faith and sincerity which is the natural 
heritage of a soul uncontaminated by the weakness 
and evil of the world. There were hours in the life 
of this lonely boy when he was so filled with the 
ecstasy of his own thoughts and emotions that he 
seemed to be lifted from the earth. He would have 
given worlds for the companionship of one who 
could share his emotions and partake of his mental 
state. He felt that if he could but unburden his 
soul to somebody who would understand, it would 
be a satisfaction beyond anything else this world 
could supply. But his outstretched, supplicating 

143 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

arms found nothing to grasp, and he was thrown 
back upon his own resources for consolation. 

Denied even the limited social experiences of a 
village, the ungainly David made a sorry figure when 
he attempted to mingle in a social way with the 
boys and girls of the town a few miles distant. And 
they were as charitable as young people generally 
are, but could not help discriminating against him, 
and making side remarks about him, which some- 
times, directly or indirectly, came to his ears. If 
they could have but comprehended the sensitive stuff 
he was made of, and known how disparaging words 
burned into his bosom's core, they would have been 
moved by pity to more toleration and more dis- 
crimination in their criticisms. 

Many times in after years has David con- 
fronted the same people who thus unwittingly had 
wounded him, but now it was to render services to 
them which his special training had qualified him 
for, and he thanked God that the opportunity had 
come to return good for evil. Only they who have 
had the experience can understand that paralysis or 
disuse of all our social attributes which overshadows 
us when our tender years are spent in seclusion, and 
we have known nothing of the contact of our fellow 
men. Society is the great educator. The boy of the 
144 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

village or the lonely farm house inherits a handicap 
socially, for which years of training can hardly com- 
pensate. 

But sometimes the ungainly boy of the village, 
after a few laps in the race, takes first position, and 
moves on past all the rest to the astonishment and 
chagrin of those who had sized him up for a scrub. 

How little we know, when we look into the un- 
meaning eyes of a freckle-faced country boy, what 
latent powers may be slumbering within his brain, 
waiting an opportunity to burst into life and to lift 
him into the class which was born to do the serious 
work of the world. Life is full of just such para- 
doxes and surprises. 

When the little boy David was stung to the quick 
by the cruel words of some thoughtless boy or girl, 
he did not wince before the pointed shaft, but he said 
to himself, "Some day they will comprehend." 

That magical phrase "some day" — what romance 
does it not possess when it comes from the life of an 
earnest boy who has character and soul to back it! 
Beware of the boy who builds air castles for the 
future. Some day they will be made of more sub- 
stantial stuff than the web of dreams. In every 
mind of power, there is a premonition, a forecast of 
what its outcome is to be. The soul holds always 

145 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

in its latent consciousness an inventory of its stock 
in trade. And when we hear a crude Lincoln 
from the backwoods say, as his heart burns within 
him at the sight of fellow creatures being sold like 
beasts of the field, "If ever I have the power to strike 
that institution, I will hit it hard," we have a forecast 
of the great Lincoln of the future, who was to make 
an epoch in the world's events ; who was to open a 
new chapter in the history of his country. 

And the little boy David had premonitions of the 
future, as he bent over the wearisome tasks that each 
day brought forth. 

It would have seemed the very superlative of 
egotism, if one could have read aloud those day 
dreams, revolving in the mind of this apparently in- 
significant boy. He could not decide whether his 
aim should be to become the governor of his native 
State, or some ecclesiastical prelate, or some pro- 
fessional man who should move into the front rank 
of his fellows and challenge the right of way with 
the foremost competitors. All he could conclude 
was that it was his privilege to climb, and this he 
proposed to do with all the energy of his soul. 

God had blessed him with a retentive memory and 
an insatiable lovei for books, and he knew that these 
were the factors that would materialize his dreams 

146 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

if they were turned to the proper advantage. What 
did it matter to him whether he was wounded by 
the gibes and sneers of others, or whether he was 
slighted by those whose duty it was to be kind to 
him? While the boys and girls he knew were 
squandering their days in frivolous talk and their 
evenings in useless revelry; while they were flitting 
about like butterflies who have only a few brief 
days to display their gaudy wings before they be- 
come dull grubs, he was laying the foundation for a 
career which, one day in the future, was to fill them 
with astonishment. 

From the dim distant years of childhood there 
comes to David now, over the horizon of memory, 
some quaint and queer recollections. 

His mother was anxious, as all good mothers 
are, to have him clothed respectably. To that end 
she exercised her ingenuity to make him a suit of 
gray jeans, which was the staple product of that 
part of the country. There were no tailors avail- 
able in those days, and every mother was obliged 
to assume that function for the boys and men of 
her own household. One can imagine that there 
was a great variety of style and workmanship, de- 
pending on the aptitude of each particular mother, 
and that little regard was paid to the latest styles 

147 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

and fashions. What David remembers about this 
particular suit in question is that the seams which 
belong normally at the sides of the leg had a prone- 
ness to rotate round to the front, making it neces- 
sary to keep up a constant watch to keep them ad- 
justed to the way of respectability. 

In this grotesque array David went with his 
people over to the town, one holiday, to witness 
a celebration. Among the sports for children was 
a greasy pole, which each boy had the privilege of 
trying to climb for a certain prize which was 
stationed at the top. Without change of clothing 
or any other preparation, David undertook the dif- 
ficult task. But he does not remember to have 
accomplished it. From the scene of these festiv- 
ities with his clothes covered with grease, tand 
with all the curiosity of a boy, David found his way 
to the blacksmith shop of a certain respectable 
tradesman, who was plying his craft in spite 
of the holiday to satisfy the importunity of 
some hapless farmer of the village, whose need 
had become so pressing that it could not be post- 
poned. David proffered to blow the bellows while 
the worthy smith worked at the anvil. The boy's 
position at his task was such that a part of the 
blast, laden as it was with particles of carbon in the 

148 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

smoke, played upon his grease-covered clothes. The 
combination of soot and grease established a color 
in parts of his new trousers which was beyond all 
efforts on his part at removal. In this dishonored 
plight he was obliged to face the frowns of father 
and mother and make his way with the family 
caravan homeward. Just what his well merited 
punishment was, David cannot now remember, but 
the lesson that comes to him over the years as he is 
surrounded by his own little boys, is that the judg- 
ment of children is defective, because their minds 
are immature, and that the admonition of grease 
and soot, and the black indelible stain they leave, are 
object lessons more potent by far for the future, 
than all the cruel impressions we can make, by 
venting our anger in corporal punishment. 

It takes a certain number of knocks and falls 
and bruises to learn the law of gravitation. You 
cannot teach it by precept, nor can you enforce 
obedience to it by the rod. But when the child 
learns the pain and discomfiture that result from 
flying in the face of it, he will obey, because it 
presents itself to him as an inexorable law, with 
penalties of immediate execution. 

David the man is tidy in his apparel now, not be- 
cause of the whipping he received for compounding 

149 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

grease and soot into the fabric of his new trousers, 
but because he has learned the folly of sloven- 
liness and the expediency of being clean. 

As David grew into his 'teens he was permitted 
by his parents to attend the public schools of the 
larger towns. There he acquitted himself well as 
a student. His bent was mathematical. He found 
it no difficult matter to outstrip most of his com- 
petitors, and the glory of his life came when he 
could outcypher the teacher. He gained a certain 
prestige with his kindred for his aptness at school, 
so much so that when his dereliction of duty at 
the tasks he was supposed to accomplish on the 
farm became exasperating beyond endurance his 
father would say : "Bundle up his things and we 
will send him off to school. He is no good for any- 
thing else." 

But one day the voice of reason came to the little 
David, and he said to himself, "Why should I so 
antagonize my parents by the careless method of my 
life? All the benefits that can come to me now are 
in their hands to bestow or to withhold at their 
pleasure. And so David resolved upon a complete 
reversal of his policy. It should henceforth be 
the study of his life to please father and mother. 
Their will from this time on should be his law. 
150 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

Everything was to be done not his way but their 
way, no matter how his own judgment might dictate 
the contrary method. And the domestic troubles of 
David came to a sudden end, and the plan of his 
education took tangible form, with father to back 
him to the limit. 

The district schools had ceased to be of any 
service to him. He had gone over the same beaten 
path a number of times, the terminus of which was 
fixed by the limit of the teacher's qualification. When 
the end of the book was reached, instead of pro- 
viding for a step higher, the worthy pedagogue of 
those days would simply turn back to the beginning, 
and start the whole process over again. How many 
times David learned by rote to extract the square 
root and the cube root he cannot now remember, but 
he does recall that when the underlying principles 
of these mathematical processes were explained to 
him in high school, it was a complete new revelation, 
and he never needed to think about a rule after- 
wards. 

David had decided that unless he could gain ac- 
cess to the high school, he would have to undertake 
the task of educating himself. And to that end his 
private room was provided with a heating stove 
and a table, and stocked with all the books the house- 

151 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

hold possessed. And after the hard day's work on 
the farm was ended and the evening chores disposed 
of, David sought the seclusion of his room, and 
read and pondered and dreamed. In the morning 
long before the other inmates of the household were 
astir, he was at his books again, with all the zeal 
that is born of refreshing sleep; and when storms 
swept over the valley, and made work on the farm 
impossible, David in his silent retreat was tilling an- 
other field which one day in the future was to de- 
velop and produce a bounteous harvest. 

A certain philosophy developed in the mind of 
the boy as he read. He seemed to gain the ascend- 
ency over all his mental processes, and to have him- 
self completely under control. So thoroughly did 
he believe in himself that he wondered why other 
people did not believe in him. The unkind words of 
those who insinuated that his peculiar bent was the 
indication of a strange eccentricity were very hurtful 
to him. But he bided his time without reply. He 
had yet to learn that the greatest offense one can 
commit against a rival is to succeed where he has 
failed. 

Your life never amounts to much until you 
rouse a storm of opposition and criticism from your 
contemporaries. When you throw a ball against 

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WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

the wall it must bounce back, and the harder you 
throw, the more vigorous will be the rebound. That 
wave of criticism which arises all around you when 
you begin to do something which others have not 
done is the rebound of your action, and the more 
vigorous your effort, the more vigorous will be the 
response to it. So, young man, whoever you are, 
whenever a wave of criticism sets in against you 
in answer to earnest, honest effort, keep right on in 
that direction, and be assured that you are on the 
right road. After awhile your critics will come 
to the temple you have erected, and become earnest 
worshipers there. When the years have brought 
your vindication, the very people who opposed you 
will delight to tell the story of your struggles, and 
to relate the things you accomplished in the face of 
opposition. 

The inexperienced boy David, in his generous 
outlook upon life, imagined that all people are 
moved by altruistic motives. He had yet to learn 
the meagre soul, the selfish motive, the suspicious 
nature of many people. And this is the saddest, 
the most disappointing experience of any develop- 
ing mind. To see people abdicate their high estate, 
their priceless birthright of honor and altruism, 
and become selfish and mean and suspicious and 

153 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

dishonest is such a condescension that it shocks the 
sensibilities of those whose inexperience has kept 
them in blissful ignorance of such possibilties. 

And David had a graphic lesson in psychology 
one day that served by its analogy a useful purpose 
in the after years. He saw a little cat pursued by 
five or six big dogs, all barking and growling in 
furious anger, ready to tear the little feline refugee 
to pieces at the first opportunity. But the kitten, 
true to the instinct of her race, had taken a strategic 
position under the floor of a barn, and by violent 
sputtering and scratching was holding her formid- 
able antagonists at bay. David, moved by pity, 
came to her rescue, but the hand he had pro- 
jected under the floor to assist her, was scratched 
ten times before he could withdraw it. The little 
feline mind was so inflamed by the thought of its 
formidable enemies, that it could not distinguish 
between friend and foe, and it treated them both 
alike. 

This is just the mental condition of many people. 
They allow their minds to dwell upon grievances, 
either real or imaginary, until they see acts of hos- 
tility in the very effort to do them good. They 
accept of the gratuity with a feeling that some 
ulterior motive has prompted its bestowal, and pro- 

154 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

ceed to berate the benefactor, as though he were 
doing them an injury. 

The lesson is, that we should have charity in our 
hearts even for those ungrateful people who accept 
of our bounty and then turn to rend us. They 
are acting out the logical deductions of minds per- 
verted by inheritance or faulty training. 

A day of great rejoicing came to the little David, 
as he followed the routine work of the farm. His 
parents had decided that he might go to high school. 
Out of his frugality some little money had been 
saved, and the father proffered to supplement it 
with the amount necessary to pay his board and 
tuition for the winter. How well he remembers 
the preparation of his clothing and the selection of 
the books he was to take and the daily admonition of 
his parents as to his conduct when away. Every 
boy and girl can imagine this who has gone through 
the same process. 

And the fear and suspense that were in his mind 
at the thought of mingling with boys and girls from 
the cities and larger towns, where they would be 
instructed in social forms and have a heritage of 
gentle breeding. David felt ill at ease among 
them, and was always conscious of his limitations 
on the social side, and fearful that he might com- 

155 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

mit some blunder. These well-dressed boys and 
girls from the cities seemed to be so grand in his 
eyes that he was overawed and overwhelmed by 
them. He had still to learn the great lesson in life, 
that tinsel may simulate pure gold and have all the 
outward appearance of the royal metal. 

As David now looks around, after a score of years 
have rolled over his head, he sees the social stars of 
the first magnitude reduced almost to nothing. 
Some of them indeed have ceased to be social fac- 
tors, but have associated themselves into that milky 
way of social star dust, which projects itself dead 
and motionless in the interspaces between the active 
constellations. Their light no longer shines as a 
distinct entity, but mingles itself with the haze of 
others of its kind to map out a huge meaningless 
blur on the social horizon, where nothing is pre- 
tended and nothing has been accomplished. Of the 
score or more of the social leaders of this particular 
high school, David looks all about himself in vain 
to discover one of them who has risen to distinction. 
They are wiped off the map completely. They were 
gaudy butterflies then, but they have become dull 
grubs now, which grope in darkness, and seek the 
back streets of the villages to hide their faces from 
the sight of men. They live automatically, breath- 

156 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

ing so much oxygen, and consuming so much water 
and food, maintaining the vegetative processes of 
life, and waiting until the merciful hand of Fate 
waves their exit and relieves them of the necessity 
of living any more. 

But the ranks of those who are doing the world's 
work, and giving the world its new thoughts are 
being recruited from the honest plodder, whose 
underlying motives were not for social distinction, 
but for knowledge, who knew the value of the fleet- 
ing moments, and doled them out as the miser doles 
out his coins when necessity demands them. And 
the transformation of a score of years has been a 
complete one. It is a picture printed from the 
negative — the light has become darkness and the 
darkness has become light. That scripture which 
says, "The last shall be first and the first shall be 
last" is wonderfully true to life. We look over the 
sweep of a score of years since we were boys and 
girls together, and we see its absolute fulfillment. 

As a student at high school David was diligent 
and painstaking and enthusiastic. He threw all the 
energy of his soul into the work, and never was 
known to report himself unprepared at classes. 
There are in his possession now text-books of geom- 
etry and trigonometry, with the corners all charred 

157 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

and burned, which tell their story of his effort to 
force the day into the night, and when falling asleep 
in spite of himself, the book in his hand went 
against the heating stove to receive its brand of dil- 
igence and perpetuate the incidents of that struggle. 

At that particular time David had no fixed goal 
toward which he was aiming. He was impelled by 
an instinct of self-development, as the duckling has 
an instinct to swim. Engrossed in the all absorbing 
studies of his curriculum, he was all unmindful of 
the future. He seemed to know that the events of 
his life would throw themselves into logical se- 
quence. His one aim now was to become master of 
the fundamentals. 

The choice of a profession was a thing that came 
later in life. When David used to sit out in the 
evenings to read his star maps by the aid of a 
dim lantern light, and to figure out the topography 
of the different constellations, the people of the vil- 
lage, and even his own kindred, began to have their 
doubts about his sanity. But Cassiopia, and Ursa 
Major and the Pleiades sent their message of sym- 
pathy over the abyss to console the eager mind of 
the struggling boy. Natural philosophy and chemis- 
try yielded their fascinating secrets, and above all 
geology opened its volumes of rock-written history, 

158 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

and invested the mountains and the rivers and the 
cliffs of rock and even the common boulders with a 
meaning they had never before possessed. From 
the little circumscribed horizon which was hedged 
in by his meagre knowledge of the physical world, 
and by the extreme orthodox position of all the 
people he had associated with, David rose to the 
conception of boundless space and endless duration 
of years. Long afterward when David as a profes- 
sional man traveled through the mountain passes 
and valleys of his native section, as his daily duty 
necessitated him to do, his smattering of geological 
lore furnished the materials for a continuous specu- 
lation on the age and origin and probable correlation 
of the cliffs of rock and gorges and fossil remains 
that he encountered by the wayrside, land every 
rude boulder had for him a story of thrilling fasci- 
nation. 

And David came up against the great world 
problems of philosophy and religion, and was made 
to wonder at the different conclusions that had 
been arrived at by various classes of men in all 
ages ; and at the positivenes's of their contentions 
and the vehemence with which they asserted them- 
selves. He had grasped in his mind the conception 
of the boundless extent of the universe, and the 

159 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

inexorable laws that govern all its processes, and 
in these great thoughts he saw a vindication of the 
contention for Deity. Such law and order without 
a law Giver and a Regulator was to his mind an 
absurdity. Materialism was to him then, as it is 
now, the negation of the universe. 

But why should men group themselves into 
leagues of allegience known as churches to attribute 
different purposes and different methods to the God 
they all worship? Why should others contend that 
no God is necessary to the cosmic process, while 
they tacitly admit the omniscience that is manifest 
in the perfection of the laws of nature? All these 
things were most confusing to the evolving mind 
of the boy. And then there was his own relationship 
to the phenomena of the world. Whence came he? 
what was he here for? and whither was he to go? 
These were queries he could not get away from even 
if he tried. But why should he try to get away from 
them? Do they not involve the most momentous 
consequences of anything in this world ? I take issue 
with all those who maintain the position that it is 
dangerous to confront the problem of the relation- 
ship of modern scientific development with the re- 
ligious dogmas that have come down to us from 
ages past. 

160 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

In the first place, you cannot, if you should 
try, keep intelligent minds away from this 
problem. It is the most fascinating theme of thought 
in all the world. If it is put under the ban of the 
church by over zealous sectarians, it will smoulder 
beneath the surface with ever increasing force, until 
one day it will burst forth into a conflagration. 
This was the fate of the Catholic church at the 
beginning of the Reformation. The idea that men 
were to cease to think for themselves, but in all 
things to be governed by the traditions of bygone 
ages ; that the dead past was to step into the living 
present and dominate absolutely its thought, was the 
thing which turned the hand of progress back a 
thousand years, and kept untold millions of people 
bound hand and foot in the thralldom of supersti- 
tion. The middle ages present to us a spectacle 
of human intelligence held completely in abeyance 
by the iron hand of tradition. 

It was not that the world was turned over 
to the dominion of Satan. It was not that 
mankind had degenerated into an inferior breed. 
Physically and potentially men were just the 
same during that whole dark period as they 
had been in the rising dawn of enlightenment which 
had preceded it, as they are now in the noon-tide 

161 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

of civilization, with the sun of truth ascended to 
the zenith. It was simply an example on a world 
scale of the working out of the idea that human 
intelligence must not be permitted to penetrate fields 
hitherto unexplored ; that human beings must not 
think away from the traditions of the past, no matter 
how much these traditions have become perverted, 
or how incompatible they have become with com- 
mon sense and reason. 

Stagnation was the result. And in the mental heb- 
etude that settled like a cloud over the mind of men, 
the weak were preyed upon by the strong — the forces 
of evil thrive ever better in the darkness — and the 
edict that went forth in the name of the Church was 
absolute and unconditional. There was no higher 
court of human intelligence to pass upon appeals nor 
to consider the possible errors of that tribunal which 
held itself to be infallible. In such a system, the dead 
forms were maintained, but the spirit of religion was 
extinguished. For a thousand years no scientific 
advancement was made, and no new thought given 
to the world. Men became vicious and brutal in 
their instincts. Vice ran riot; justice had no place 
in the world. But beneath the surface of this ap- 
parently motionless social fabric, there was a move- 
ment in progress that was one day to tear it asunder. 

162 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

Even the muffler of church anthemas could not pre- 
vent men from thinking, though the terrible conse- 
quences, temporal and spiritual, which that involved 
were sufficient to deter all but the bravest from as- 
serting themselves. After long centuries of this 
world-stagnation had worn themselves away, the 
accumulated mind pressure from within became so 
intense that it burst asunder the relentless bonds 
which had held it, and with them the whole social 
and ecclesiastical structure which had made them 
possible. 

The example of individuals, who, with their 
lives in their hands, dared to proclaim the right 
of independent thought was soon to bear fruit. 
Whole nations emancipated themselves, and went 
over to the new movement, which in art and science 
and literature we call the Renaissance, which in re- 
ligion we call the Reformation. And the great world 
system which had held the minds of men in subjec- 
tion for a thousand years was irreparably divided. 
Any religious system which demands of its subjects 
the absolute surrender of individual opinion will find 
itself defeated in the end. For the world is built on 
the plan of progression, and no system of thought, 
secular or religious, can for any great length of time 
stop the onward movement of things. 

163 






AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

As with society, so with the individual ; limitation 
of thought means limitation of growth. Faculties 
unemployed become palsied. Nature has laid on us 
the injunction that we put our mental talents out 
at usury or we forfeit the right to them. God gave 
us intelligence that we might employ it to a useful 
purpose, and act well our part in the great world 
drama of progression. 

What a formidable thing is the term orthodoxy! 
In ages past it has held the prerogative of life or 
death in its all-powerful grasp. The greatest penalty 
at its disposal in this enlightened age is social 
ostracism, and even this it applies with an un- 
certain issue. In the utlimate analysis ortho- 
doxy means conformity to tradition. The definition 
of the term has been modified with the more liberal 
outlook on life that our modern civilization has 
brought about. Thanks to the new interpretation, 
we can still be orthodox without necessarily believ- 
ing that the whale swallowed Jonah. With the 
limitations we have thrown about it, the term is 
useful in its application. Modern speculation tends 
to veer ever too far away from the old moorings, 
and to drift without rudder or helm to guide it. 
Men have become fanatical in the application of new 
theories, and are demanding the same unquestioning 

164 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

acquiescence in their position that was demanded by 
the religious bigots of the middle ages. 

A man, up to very recent years, could have no 
respectable standing in the scientific world, who was 
not willing to pronounce the shibboleth of Mr. Dar- 
win's theory in its material aspect. Speculations 
on the spiritual side of life are altogether unpopular, 
and carry with them the idea of heretical departure 
from fixed opinions. Modern science Is taking 
altogether too much for granted. The modern scien- 
tific mind needs liberalizing from its traditions. 
Our constant search should be for the truth. There 
are not in this world of ours two distinct sets of 
truths, incompatible with one another. There can 
be no conflict between religion and science if we 
have true religion and true science. Incompatibility 
means misunderstanding. Truth is not divided 
against itself. God is not the author of confusion. 
If we endeavor to deny men the right of freedom 
of thought in philosophy and religion, we shall 
continue the so-called conflict between science and 
religion indefinitely into the future. 

But I am forgetting myself, and putting too much 
personality into my narrative. I am describing the 
play of emotions that developed in the mind of the 

165 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

young man who first comes up against the great 
problems of science and religion. I shall, therefore, 
proceed with my story. 

Our David had been a great reader, but his read- 
ing had been of the authors of the old school. Pe- 
rusal of Rollin and much attention to the Bible had 
given him a strong orthodox bias, and his reasoning 
had all along been the method that makes all things 
conform to preconceived ideas and empirical thought. 
But now he came up against the great problems of 
geological time and of evolution. How was he to 
harmonize these with that tradition which made 
the earth only six thousand years old and initiated 
the species of life all at once by a simple command 
of Deity? It was such a simple, easy process to 
have a world created in that way, and required so 
little mental effort to decipher the plan of it! The 
untutored boy had not yet dared to call in question 
any of the old traditions. In his mind it amounted 
to a mortal crime to raise such a question. 

But a riper mentality completely changed his 
viewpoint. And he said to himself, "In this 
great universe which God has created and placed 
at my disposal with all its varied things of beauty 
and of interest, who should have the right to limit 
the processes of my mind, to put a barrier in my 

166 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

way and say, "You can think thus far and no 
farther." It is my prerogative, it is my God-given 
birthright, to throw out the eternal question mark 
before everything in heaven and earth, and challenge 
the right of way with every purported truth. And 
the pendulum swung too far the other way and 
the boy found himself drifting from his moorings 
without rudder or compass to guide him. 

Among the rural folk who were the associates 
of David he found nobody who seemed to see things 
from his viewpoint, or who was troubling himself 
about anything in religion or science, but the old 
theological dogmas. He wondered why it was that 
he seemed so different from other people. Some- 
times it seemed to him that an evil power had got 
possession of him and that he was irreparably lost. 
But a more mature mentality brought him in con- 
tact with many more of his kind, and then he com- 
prehended that he was but one of a multitude who 
were struggling with the great world problem. 

And are you, my reader, in sympathy with this 
life-and-death struggle, which this honest, conscienci- 
ous boy found himself confronted with? I know 
that if your mentality is of the same kind, you your- 
self have shed tears of anguish and sent up prayers 
to the throne of Grace for guidance. It is the ef- 

167 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

fort of the churches to evade these burning questions 
which has emptied their pews and brought religion 
into discredit. The permanence of any institution 
depends on the amount of truth it has back of it. 
Error though it comes in the name of Deity must 
crumble and decay. Only the truth can stand. 

This book is written twenty years after the strug- 
gle began, and reflects the final deductions to date 
on this momentous theme. And David has learned 
to tolerate the opinions of others, as he trusts the 
indulgent reader will tolerate the opinions which 
are to follow in a subsequent chapter and which he 
alone stands responsible for. 

David's enthusiasm, while still at the high school, 
grew with the years and he listed himself always 
with the competitors for first position in his classes. 
And they were happy years despite the handicaps 
that were entailed from his rural extraction and 
his physical imperfections. 

Recognizing the important bearing that ability 
at public speaking has on the career of any man, no 
matter what his profession, David determined that he 
would develop himself along this line. 

There was a certain Sunday morning meeting he 
used to attend, where students and teachers volun- 
teered to speak as they were moved upon by the 

168 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

Spirit. He resolved that at one of these sessions 
he would make a beginning. When the audience 
was wrought up with enthusiasm and students were 
rising to their feet in quick succession, he chose 
an opportune moment to sandwich himself into the 
program, for the time was in much demand. No 
sooner had he gained his feet than his head began 
to whirl, and all the ideas he had ever had seemed 
to depart from him. He sat down in shame and 
confusion. 

No one who has not gone through the process can 
imagine the melancholy condition of a sensitive mind 
so humiliated. He was defeated, but not conquered. 
He resolved then and there that with the aid of 
God he would surmount every obstacle that might 
come in his way. 

A few days later a call was made for volunteers 
to speak on a certain subject before the whole school 
assembled. The hand of David went up in response, 
though it took all the courage he could muster to 
raise it. This time he proposed to maintain his 
mental balance by having notes to refer to. When 
the hour arrived he confronted his audience with 
fear and trembling, and in some sort of way got 
through his task without making a balk. But the 
old master rose to his feet and soundly berated 
169 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

the frightened boy for daring to appear in such a 
meeting with notes to speak from. 

After such a steam roller process the boy felt him- 
self smashed so flatly to the earth that he could 
hardly raise his head. But his resolution only grew 
stronger as obstacles multiplied. Every opportunity 
that presented itself found him confronting the 
public. Gradually the latent fear which had so 
nearly overwhelmed him gave way to confidence, 
and people began to express satisfaction at his ora- 
torical efforts. 

As an acknowledgment of his success there came 
to him as a great surprise an invitation and request 
from the faculty that he should deliver the address 
on mathematics at the commencement exercises to 
be held in a public auditorium in the presence of all 
the prominent people of the community. 

Into this final appearance before the faculty and 
the student body and the assembled multitude he 
threw all the energy of his soul. To them it was pos- 
sibly nothing more than a passing number on the 
program, rendered with some degree of credit by a 
boy of backwoods extraction. But to him it was the 
culmination of one of the great struggles of his 
life, a milestone in the way of his progress. 

David the man has many vivid recollections of 
170 



WINNER OF REAL VICTORIES 

boys and girls who came and went like flakes of a 
winter storm to alight upon the earth and take up 
their place in the snowdrifts we call cities, or to fall 
upon the level plane where all things are equal. With 
the eye of philosophy he analyzes now their mental 
and moral make-up and is convinced that to each 
one has been dealt out just exactly the reward he 
merited. For nature is just in all her processes. 
The eternal chancellors of God are cause and ef- 
fect. Any man who tries to gain credit and favor 
by any other method than that based upon value 
received, is a thief and a robber, and in the end he 
will find himself deceived and defeated. But how 
little we comprehended in that school-boy day these 
inexorable laws of nature ; and how little we thought 
of the great readjustment that was to come with 
the years, when we were to go out each individually 
and meet the real problems of life ! 

It was a play world then full of gossamer dreams. 
Fine personality, fine manners, and fine clothes 
seemed to be the elements of success in life. Merit 
for merit's sake we hardly perceived. The ungainly 
boy from the backwoods town seemed to have a 
hopeless case. He hardly dared to believe in him- 
self. But twenty years of real experience have sup- 
planted the gossamer dreams with real facts. Life's 

171 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

method and motive with each one have rendered 
their verdict. Honor has developed where it was 
least expected, and discredit has fallen upon heads 
that were erect with pride. 



172 



CHAPTER IX 

SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

AMONG the many illustrations of the outcome 
of reputations which were based on tinsel, and 
show, David remembers a certain young man and a 
certain young lady, who came each from different 
parts of the country and matriculated at the high 
school. The verdict of the students was that they 
were both very handsome. They dressed well and 
had splendid manners. At least, this was the opinion 
of the backwoods boys and girls, though it would no 
doubt have been much modified by more mature 
judgment. At any rate they were the belle and beau 
of the school, and the boys and girls gave them the 
right of way — a privilege which they accepted as a 
royal prerogative and regarded as their birthright. 
To the untutored mind of David they were certainly 
grand. They seemed to be out of his class com- 
pletely and he marveled at the sight of them. Nature 
seemed to him to have strewn their pathway with 
roses and opened the way of success in life without 
requiring of them a single effort. No doubt they 

173 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

were convinced in their own mind of the same thing. 

When the school days were ended they went their 
way as the rest of the students did and were lost 
to view for many years. 

After the school days your star of the first magni- 
tude and of the second magnitude and of all the 
magnitudes is lost to vision for a period of time. 
Many of them are gone forever, but some rise over 
the horizon again and ascend toward the zenith aug- 
menting as they go. Some become satellites, shin- 
ing, when they do shine, by the light they borrow 
from others around which they must always re- 
volve. And others become luminaries, emitting their 
own light, and drawing a retinue of satellites in their 
train. Some disintegrate into star dust and dissem- 
inate into the milky way; some shoot across the 
heavens like meteors and burn themselves out in a 
great flare of light, ending in ashes and cinders ; 
some collide with others and burst themselves 
asunder in the impact; and some become the fixed 
stars whose light shines on forever and ever. 

And David is scanning the heavens now with 
the mental telescope, watching for the stars of by- 
gone days to rise again. When ten years have 
elapsed and they fail to come he marks them as 
very doubtful, and when twenty years brings no tid- 

174 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

ings of them he classifies them as hopeless and 
marks them off his chart. 

The young couple we are describing had gone 
into the limbo to await their fate. By accident David 
called one day in a little grocery store in a sequest- 
ered village remote from the towns and cities and 
met a middle aged woman serving in the capacity of 
saleswoman, dealing out sugar and coal oil in small 
quantities and marking the score against her neigh- 
bors in a well-worn account book. The finger of 
time had engraved its record upon her countenance ; 
the frosts of forty years had begun their bleaching 
process. Her gown was seedy, her hair unkempt, 
and withal she had a forlorn appearance that was 
sad to contemplate. The poetry had all gone out 
of her life to be supplanted by the dullest kind of 
prose. 

A few direct questions brought out the fact that 
she was the young lady of twenty years before who 
had possessed so many charms and excited so much 
admiration. She had parted with the companion of 
her social triumphs when the school days were ended, 
and had been sharing the fortunes of an unlucky 
man till he died and left her in poverty to battle 
with the world alone and fight the grim fight for 
the very existence of herself and a half dozen hapless 

175 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

children whose ragged apparel and uncared persons 
attested too well the tragedy that life had thrust 
upon them. 

The train of memories evoked by this chance meet- 
ing excited in the mind of David a curiosity to 
know something of the outcome of the young man 
who had stood by her so valiantly and served her 
with so much gallantry in the dream life of twenty 
years ago. 

He had retired to his native town and buried him- 
self in its meagre affairs. His reputation had limited 
itself to a radius not to exceed three miles in each 
direction. To produce a few cabbages and cucum- 
bers for the summer market, and to garner enough 
food stuff to carry them over the winter was the 
height of his ambition. Even a mole without eye- 
sight has sense enough to do this. As a social factor 
he had simply gone off the map. 

I am telling this not to cast any reflection on the 
time honored profession of farmer to which I myself 
was trained, but to recall the huge bluff this young 
man put up with his fine neckties and his small- 
heeled boots, and the way he backed down and re- 
ceded when society called the bluff and demanded 
him to make good. Every social unit will stand for 
its integral value sooner or later. The bluff game 

176 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

may work 'for a time but it cannot endure. Sham 
and pretense are ephemeral things. They melt 
away before the real facts of life as the dews of the 
morning melt before the rising sun. 

In contrast to these fine appearing people David 
remembers a boy from one of the southern counties 
of his native State who came to high school and took 
up his position at the lowest point in the social scale, 
and began to make his way. Of all, the forlorn 
hopes one can imagine, this boy seemed to have the 
least chance. He was clothed in homespun trousers 
and wore blue jumpers and overalls on every occas- 
ion, social or otherwise. His parents were poor and 
he was obliged to work as janitor for three or four 
hours out of every day to keep his board bill and 
running expenses going. This handicap kept him 
low in his classes, but the other boys and girls did 
not think of the tragedy that was weighing down 
upon him and retarding his progress. They re- 
garded him as a dunce who belonged at the foot of 
the class by the calibre of intellect he was born with. 
And indeed he was not a gem of the first water in- 
tellectually, but he was a plodder with a soul in him 
which had no thought of defeat no matter how dis- 
couraging the outlook. In the silence of the mid- 
night hours he plied his books when all the world 

177 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

beside was hushed in slumber. And in the dingy 
little room with its meager furnishings where he 
spent his odd hours and rested for the night, he dared 
to dream dreams and build air castles. 

Gradually the method of his life began to win 
out ; one by one the fancy fellows who had disdained 
him were distanced in the race. It was a repetition 
of the old fable of the tortoise and the hare. The 
one mental characteristic which always wins out in 
the end is persistence. Brilliance of mind is often 
linked with other conditions which completely nul- 
lify its effects. Often it is a handicap rather than 
an advantage. But pertinacity is a winner every 
time, even when the odds seem hopelessly against 
it. Beware of the boy of fixed purpose. Even 
though he may seem dull and stupid, some day his 
light will shine and the world will hear from him. 
When the meteor flash of his disdainful fellows has 
extinguished itself and left but the cinders and ashes 
to mark its train, he will be shining among the fixed 
stars whose twinkling light goes on and on forever. 

David has watched the career of this particular 
young man, and has seen his sphere of influence and 
usefulness widen with the rolling years. Honors 
have been conferred upon him. Positions of the 
highest degree of responsibility and trust have 

178 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

seemed to fall so naturally into his way that people 
regarded them as his birthright and asked no ques- 
tions. Quite recently he was elevated to the highest 
position in the educational circles of his native State 
and the honor descended upon him so easily, and with 
so little apparent effort that his influential competi- 
tors were filled with amazement. 

His life is pre-eminently the vindication of the law 
of compensation. While the other young men and 
young women who seemed to be so much more 
favored than he were dissipating their energies in 
the social whirl, he was laying the foundation in 
silence and obscurity for that career which was one 
day to lift him bodily out of their class and place 
him on a social and intellectual plane so far above 
them that they could never hope to overtake him. 
Their day of satisfaction came twenty years ago. 
They danced, and they have had to pay the piper. 
Their butterfly wings were ephemeral, and when 
they withered and detached themselves, there was 
nothing left but the dull grub which had lost its 
power of flight and was doomed to creep and crawl 
for the rest of its natural life. 

For David as for every other young man, the most 
pertinent question that obtruded itself into his life 
was the choice of a profession. 

179 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

I am quite sure that many successes and many 
failures in life are traceable to the right or wrong 
solution of this very problem. Among the multitude 
of professional or quasi-professional men are many 
who would have been much more successful as brick 
masons or as farmers, and among the toilers with the 
hand are many who have mental qualities undis- 
covered which would make them famous if they but 
knew themselves. 

As I work on this manuscript the newspapers are 
full of the advertisements of a great comedian who 
hails from across the ocean and is heralded with such 
a reputation as a fun maker that hundreds of peo- 
ple are turned away from the packed music halls 
which greet him in every city. Wealth has rolled into 
his coffers as though the touch of Alladin's lamp 
were at his disposal, and the great and the mighty 
of all lands are clamoring for the chance to hear 
him. The biographers of this famous man tell us 
that he was a common coal heaver only a few brief 
years ago and that he began to attract attention by 
singing to his fellow laborers as they rested to eat 
their lunch in the mid-day. The men from the 
mines were so enthusiastic over his songs that the 
crowds he gathered became an incumbrance to the 
works and his employers made complaint that he 

180 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

was becomng a nuisance. But Harry Lauder did 
not quit singing. He took to the stage, with the 
result that he is at this time the highest paid pro- 
fessional of his class in the world. 

The fact that great men in all lines have tended 
to come in groups is an indication of the influence 
for development which one mind possesses over 
other minds. One man is born with initiative enough 
to break over the barriers of traditional thought, and 
in the effulgence of his light other men discover 
themselves. There is no doubt that what the poet 
says is literally true of the flowers which waste their 
sweetness on the desert air. The only advice I have 
to give to the young man who: is grappling with the 
momentous question of the choice of a life's profes- 
sion is that he make it a really serious problem, and 
weigh and analyze himself with the philosopher's 
scale as though he were deciding the problem for 
some other individual. With the most careful 
scrutiny of our stock of mental materials we might 
decide wrongly. But we are much less likely to 
do so if we enter into the problem with the real 
analytic spirit. 

With the close of his high school course our 
David had gone back to the old farm and rested for 
the time being in its infinite repose. The song of 

181 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

the bird and the murmur of the brook were music 
in his ears as of old, but the flowers of his native 
hills, and the spangled canopy of the night had a 
different meaning to him now. The rainbow of the 
summer sky had sent its message down, the story 
of the dimensions and distances of the sun and the 
moon and the stars had been told. The great laws 
of the universe had dawned upon his mind. The 
wonders of the world had multiplied with his mental 
expansion. Religion had readjusted itself on a ra- 
tional basis, and the obligation of man to his fellow 
man had assumed serious proportions in his life. 
Of all the avenues open to me which will enable me 
to do the most good in the world? This was the 
problem which revolved in the mind of the boy as he 
worked in the hay field or traveled the unfrequented 
mountain trails. 

One morning when the farm work was in full 
swing, the group of workers had halted for break- 
fast, a letter was delivered into the hands of David. 
He opened it with much curiosity as he sat in his 
place in the circle around the camp fire. It was 
written by a committee which had been appointed 
over in the town to: get up a big celebration for the 
fourth of July, and David was apprised that he had 
been chosen for the orator of the day. With only 

182 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

two days for preparation, and these to be filled out 
with the most arduous toil from daylight till dark, 
there was not much chance to make the necessary 
preparation. But David was glad of this opportun- 
ity, for none of his kindred or acquaintances of that 
part had known anything of the struggle he had 
made to develop in public speaking. With some de- 
gree of trepidation he confronted the big audience as 
the master of ceremonies anounced the oration by the 

honorable David . He seemed to have a flash 

of inspiration, and acquitted himself much to his own 
astonishment and satisfaction, and to the approval 
of his auditors as judged by their demonstrations. 

Over the years there comes down to the recollec- 
tion of David only the closing fragment of that 
speech. All the rest of it has gone into oblivion. 
But the peroration is one of those detached crystals 
of thought which maintain their form and lustre, 
while all else has vanished by the dissolving process 
of the years. To him this is an indicator of the con- 
text, and it has for him the same interest that all our 
early efforts at composition and oratory have for all 
of us. It brings back the emotion of that palpitating 
morning when he was mouthpiece for the patriotic 
sentiment which filled the air. It ran on this wise : 

"May we each feel that our country's honor is our 
183 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

own. May these stars and stripes be the insignia of 
honor and virtue in every clime to which they may be 
carried. May the national virtue which they repre- 
sent be perpetuated for all time. And when that 
angel stands with one foot upon the land and one 
upon the sea to say that time shall be no more, may 
he transplant them to the golden shores of eternity." 

David went back to his work with a light heart. 
He divined what actually happened that this speech 
would be an opening wedge to gain him recognition 
for the future. 

It happened to be the period in his native territory 
of division on national party lines, and people were 
eager for information on political principles. That 
was the period unique in our experience when politics 
had not degenerated into the blind contention of 
party before principle. Each citizen was eager to 
know the truth before making his choice of the party 
to become affiliated with. One can imagine what a 
boon it would be to every community if all people 
were to keep their minds open for the truth in 
political matters as they do in other things. Your 
average politician uses the argument which he thinks 
will win the approval of his auditors and procure 
votes, with very little regard for the accuracy of his 
statements. He is no unselfish disseminator of the 

184 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

truth people require for their guidance. He repre- 
sents rather the personal ambition of some man or 
some set of men who are anxious to be elected. The 
smooth shaved politician from the city makes him- 
self the boon companion of the farmer and the 
laborer when he is out to procure votes, but when 
the smoke of election day clears away and the place 
of personal contact has shifted from the country to 
the city, his cordial bearing undergoes a great modi- 
fication. 

One must be orthodox in politics if he 
expects to gain any of the emoluments which per- 
tain to party affiliation. But to be orthodox often 
means to lose your own freedom of thought. A 
great conclave of your party meets together at cer- 
tain stated intervals and formulates the principles 
for which the party proposes to stand. Some parts 
of those platforms are honest, and some parts are 
cunningly drawn for the purpose of catching votes. 
The platform is handed down to you, the individual 
member of the party, with the statement implied if 
not expressed that it contains your thoughts ready 
made and that you must conform to them or lose 
your prestige as an advocate of the party. I appeal 
from such machine-made principles and assert the 
right of the citizen to individual thought. Party 

185 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

politics is necessary; I am willing to let parties re- 
cruit their ranks from those who are willing to sur- 
render private opinion on the party altar and to 
think as they are told to think. 

But we are reverting in memory to that good old 
day when people were seeking eagerly for the truth 
in matters political. David had a vivid remembrance 
of coming over from the village to the town as a 
stripling boy and seeing his name posted prominently 
on the posters as the speaker of the evening, while 
the brass band paraded the streets to gather the 
crowds together. One can imagine that the sight 
brought some satisfaction to the maturing youth 
who had so recently in the same streets been the 
despised boy. 

Temporarily he accepted a position as teacher in 
the public schools for the winter months to replenish 
his depleted wallet and to prepare for the next step 
forward. But to his mind this was never more than 
a temporary expedient. It was an occupation too 
trite and commonplace. It was too much dependent 
on temperament. The field was already too much 
exploited. 

The real teacher with the instinct for his calling is 
rather a rare individual compared with the hundreds 
who aspire to that function with the thought gen- 

186 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

erally of the emolument involved or the social stand- 
ing appertaining. The man who is a dynamic mental 
force, attracting and holding the attention of his 
fellows by his magnetism and raising the level of 
mentality all around him, is certainly a benefactor 
to his race. If his bent is spiritual and his disposi- 
tion optimistic and altruistic, his influence carries 
over to succeeding generations for an indefinite per- 
iod. But to one such luminary there are hundreds 
of satellites who are content to follow the prescribed 
methods and courses, and revolve in their fixed orbits 
without asking questions. They sell their stock of 
traditional lore as the grocer sells coil oil and sugar, 
never thinking of any service other than the cold 
blooded bargain of so many hours for so many dol- 
lars and cents. 

Between these two extremes there are all grades 
of proficiency. Many of the satellites even dare at 
times to quit their orbit and soar off into space for 
brief reconnoitres, but they must swing back. They 
have not the soul to explore new fields or to initiate 
new methods. 

To be one of the real luminaries of the teaching 
profession would be glorious indeed. But the posi- 
tion is not elective. Such persons are born, not 
made. The average person would have fifty chances 

187 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

to one against him in this throw of the dice, and 
anything short of first rank would not be worth 
while. At least, so thought the boy David as he 
weighed and considered the probabilities in the 
case. 

Merchants and bankers in the pursuit of their 
business are cold blooded, calculating folk, and very 
little of the humane element enters into their transac- 
tions. In their way they do good in the world, but 
the benefits they bestow are only incidental to the 
great issue of their life, which is to make dividends 
and become rich. 

Lawyers are men of great opportunity so far as 
personal advantage is concerned, and no doubt many 
of them have been great benefactors to mankind. 
But it always seemed to the boy David that the legal 
profession, as it works out in actual practice, is a 
perpetual conspiracy against the integrity of the soul. 
Excuse it as he will, the attorney who goes into a 
fight to establish the innocence of a man whose hands 
he knows to be reeking with his brother's blood, or 
whose chattels he knows to belong to another must 
compromise his sense of the highest rectitude. And 
then so much of the attorney's duty consists in ferret- 
ing out the faults of his fellow men and sounding 
them from the housetop! So often he must accuse 

188 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

and throw the energy of his soul into the effort to 
establish guilt, that he may easily lose sight of the 
obligation of mercy in his eagerness to establish 
justice, or he might forget both in his great desire 
to win the case. Altruism undefiled has rather a hard 
chance where winning one's case is the criterion of 
success in life, and where failure is inglorious no 
matter what the condition of it. 

Then it seemed to David that the subject matter 
of the legal profession lacked that expansile element 
which is characteristic of the scientific professions. 
Janus-like it is looking backward instead of forward. 
Its conclusions are based upon precedents from the 
dead past. It has none of those great generalizations 
to offer which have thrilled the world with a Prin- 
cipia or a thesis on natural selection. Such research 
possibilities as it can boast of are among musty 
parchments which record the conclusions of men of 
bygone ages. 

This objections, I ought to say, were those made 
by an inexperienced boy, and may be hastily and 
inconsiderately drawn. He is stating them not as 
actual facts but as arguments that came up to him 
in his effort to choose a profession. The years that 
have since elapsed have brought to his acquaintance 
many noble men who have risen to eminence and 

189 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

reflected credit on their commonwealth in spite of 
all the objections to their legal profession. 

And David was directed to the medical profession 
by seeing all around him people in affliction, who 
were subjected to the most irrational methods of 
treatment by old women of the villages, or by itiner- 
ant quacks who imposed their ignorant deductions 
with the boldest effrontery. To see those terrible 
life-and-death struggles which came at times to his 
native town depending for their issue upon persons 
who had not the least knowledge of the fundamentals 
of medical science would have been ludicrous if 
it had not been so tragic in its consequences. Surely 
here was an opportunity to apply intelligence and 
humane effort to a cause which had imperative need 
of it. The service of the physician and surgeon 
seemed so direct and imminent in its application and 
often so immediate in its consequences, and his life 
seemed to come so close to the life of his patrons, that 
David saw in it an opportunity for the play of all 
those fine-spun ideas of altruism he had dreamed 
about. 

It is true that the other side of the picture came 
up before him. He saw all the shams and frauds 
that are put forth in the name of medical science. 
He saw the opportunity too often taken advantage 

190 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

of by unscrupulous persons to impose unreasonable 
burdens of compensation upon confiding patrons, and 
the odium which fixes itself on the whole profession 
as a result of it. These considerations seemed so 
weighty at one time as almost to overwhelm him. 
But a careful weighing of the problem convinced him 
that the medical profession could make a man every- 
thing or nothing. Its opportunities are not com- 
parative but superlative in either direction. He be- 
lieved he had character enough to place him in the 
class that should choose the better part. After all r. 
is the altruistic motive which makes any profession or 
calling in life glorious. If we do things because 
we love people, our pleasure in doing them will 
augment as we grow in capability to render more 
and better service, and our satisfaction in life will 
expand as we grow, and even the tedious and disa- 
agreeable parts of our profession will cease to be 
irritating when love is the motive which impels us 
onward. But if we develop the mercenary outlook 
on life and measure out so much cold blooded work 
for so many dollars and cents, we may get some 
satisfaction in building up a big reserve, we may 
feel some of the social and political power which is 
inherent in money, but we shall never know the 
exaltation of mind that comes from rendering ser- 

191 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

vice for the sake of love, and receiving the grateful 
homage of those we have served. 

And in the medical profession David thought he 
saw an opportunity to come near to his fellow man. 
It seemed to offer an outlet for the love he felt 
toward all people. It seemed to have in it the pos- 
sibility of work with the altruistic motive. And so 
he made his choice and began preparing for the east- 
ward migration to take a college course. 

There is one chapter in the life of every normal 
individual which demands consideration, and cannot 
reasonably be excluded. That is the chapter which 
deals with the dawn of the emotions, and the well- 
ing up in the soul of those impulses which have for 
their ultimate object the selection of affinities, and 
the linking together in pairs of all such as are will- 
ing to be amenable to the great law of nature mani- 
fest in the instinct of the perpetuation of the race. 

It is the great aggregate romance of nature that 
human beings should be born of opposite sexes, each 
the complement mentally and physcally of the other, 
and be endowed with those instincts and impulses 
which draw them together. For the law of love is 
as imperative as the law of gravitation, and quite 
as inexorable in its demands. There never was a 
human being, normal or abnormal, who did not re- 

192 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

spond in some measure to this great law. The 
veriest fag ends of humanity seem to seek their 
affinities and find mutual satisfaction in their choice. 
But when the great impulse of nature takes hold 
of people of intellect and soul, it means more than 
instinct, more than physical desire, more than social 
obligation ; it means a new heaven and a new earth 
— an inspiration of poetry, of music, of valor, and 
of all the higher possibilities of life. It weaves itself 
like a golden thread through the whole fabric of 
history, and insinuates itself with emphasis into the 
highest pinnacles of attainment. It nerves the arm 
of the warrior, it inspires the genius of the artist, 
it whispers mellifluous cadences into the ears of 
the poet, it touches with its magic power the humbl- 
est life, and adorns it with thoughts of grandeur and 
nobility. 

And David experienced the welling up of his 
emotions at a very early age though his provincial 
setting and his awkward person were barriers which 
marked his limitations. 

There is a certain grim humor now in the recol- 
lection of some of the rebuffs he received as they 
come over the years and throw themselves upon 
the screen of memory as ludicrous chapters of his 
'biography to be read in lighter vein and interspersed 

193 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

among the serious affairs of life. His untutored 
imagination saw paragons of perfection in the girls 
of his native town, and when his horizon expanded 
with the advent of high school days he was com- 
pletely over-awed by the aggregate charms of fine 
femininity. 

The ancient custom of representing Cupid as a 
blind god was not founded on fancy but on actual 
fact. Twenty years with all their changes have 
demonstrated that the abandon of infatuation known 
to sentimental youth was founded upon the imagina- 
tion pure and simple. Time has played havoc with 
the girls of twenty years ago. The peach bloom 
has faded from their cheeks, and the frosts of the 
years have sifted themselves among the glossy 
tresses. Weariness and insipidity have supplanted 
the buoyancy that once made them the charm of the 
ballroom, and the life of the social evening. The 
martyrdom of motherhood has extracted everything 
from their life of those elements that used to give 
the electric thrill and drive men to madness. In lieu 
of those it has placed upon their brow the crown 
of resignation and enshrined them as the patron 
saints of countless family altars. We would not if 
we could reverse the process. The way of nature 
was wise, that they should be withdrawn from the 

194 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

lists of the competitors for male preferment, and 
sequestered in the dominion of our home. It is the 
violation of this law of nature which casts its shadow 
over the moral tone of our highest civilization. But 
that superlative hour of the emotions was necessary 
in its time and place. It is the nascent state of 
social molecules in which they are forming combina- 
tions of the more stable texture which fixed society 
demands. 

David entered the lists as contestant for one of the 
prizes of the neighboring town, with much dismay 
and many forebodings. The good young men of the 
community who were the social leaders had so many 
advantages over him that he hardly dared to hope 
for success. They were necks and necks ahead of 
him in the race. 

The hopes and fears of those days of suspense are 
only amusing memories now, but they were terrible 
realities then ; for David was intensive in his nature, 
and entered into everything with all the fervor of 
his soul. At the first and second laps he was de- 
feated, and each time his case seemed hopeless. 
Back at the farm he took refuge in the old time 
audible resolve that some day she would comprehend 
the meaning of his life, and the realization of the 
dreams he had for the future. Each time he made a 

195 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

new resolution, that the plan of his life's work should 
be laid out upon such a large scale that she would 
be completely overshadowed in the years that were 
to come. 

A temporary truce was again ended by a dramatic 
return of all his letters, and an ultimatum that 
seemed final. Some treacherous associate had made 
a false representation, and she had acted on the im- 
pulse of the moment without questioning the validity 
of the thing reported. 

How often in life are we defrauded of friendships 
which would be priceless assets to us by little mis- 
understandings which start us off at an angle of 
separation which widens and widens as the years 
roll away ! The hot impulsive blood of our youth 
counts nothing of the cost of those dramatic ulti- 
matums which put friends out of our circle forever. 
God only knows the stories of blighted possibilities, 
of long drawn regrets, of heart aches unmitigated, 
which are strewn along the pathway of the years 
as a result of these impetuous decisions ! 

To this last and apparently final response David 
deigned not to make reply. He stood upon his honor 
and his pride, and felt assured that the years would 
vindicate him. If she chose to believe a lie without 
investigation he would never condescend to disabuse 

196 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

her mind. He buried himself in his books and 
dreamed great dreams for the future. He resolved 
to imitate the mollusk, which repairs the wound in its 
armor by filling the gap with pearl. When the 
winter days hung heavy and the world without was 
dark and dreary, he found in the seclusion of his 
room that illumination which comes from within. 
And when the smile of springtime diffused itself 
over the earth, the daisy and the buttercup sprang 
from the green sward, and the bluebird and the 
swallow returned from the land of the south, he 
walked forth alone and absorbed the poetry of the 
hour. So he was happy all the time. 

Months rolled away in this resignation. She who 
had been the subject of his dreams was moving in 
other circles and receiving the attentions of other 
young men. But she was not satisfied any more than 
was he with the situation. A chasm had opened 
itself between these two sensitive young people, and 
the pride of neither would bend to the proposal of 
a way to span it over. They were enemies when 
they both wished to be friends. Only a foolish sense 
of pride was holding them asunder. 

One evening at the close of a religious service an 
accident brought them face to face. Then they dis- 
covered that they were not enemies but friends. It 
197 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

was a night bright with spangled heavens and a half 
augmented moon. As they walked together in the 
commingled starlight and moonlight the burden of 
their troubles rolled away, and they became happy 
in the knowledge that each had been laboring under 
a delusion and that their misgivings of each other 
were of the imagination, pure and simple, without 
foundation in fact. 

The real emotion of the hour of reconciliation is 
known only to those of intensive natures. The 
thunderbolt measures its magnitude by the potential 
in the two opposing clouds which produce it. The 
greatest happiness in life often springs out of the 
greatest misery, and they who have not learned how 
to suffer can never know the meaning of exultation 
in its superlative degree. Reconciliation after quar- 
rels is like sunshine after storms. The longer the 
skies have been overshadowed and the elements dis- 
turbed, the more keen our appreciation of the ri'ft 
which lets the sunbeam through. And when the 
great blue vault is swept clean of all its blotches and 
spreads its azure canopy unsullied above us, our thrill 
of delight is intensified by remembrance of the dense 
storm clouds which erstwhile obscured it. 

The reconciliation was absolute and final. Hence- 
forth David held the fort against all competitors. 

198 



SATELLITES AND LUMINARIES 

The dream world of youth has passed away. The 
problems of life have been met and solved together. 
The friends of bygone days are scattered like autumn 
leaves before the wind, but the vow of constancy 
which grew out of those troubled days of doubt has 
remained in force unchanged while everything else 
has changed about it. 



199 



CHAPTER X 

THE YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

AN unexpected event in the family to which 
David belonged had anticipated by one year 
the possibility of his advent to college. A letter from 
his father brought with it from over the ocean the 
crystallization of all his hopes and dreams. 

David was to arrange his affairs for the eastern 
migration, and the early autumn was fixed upon for 
the time of his departure. Only they who have gone 
through a like experience can appreciate the pe- 
culiar ecstasy that comes into the mind of an ambi- 
tious boy when he sees all the barriers swept away 
which have obstructed his pathway, and beholds the 
doors of the temple of learning swing its portals 
wide ajar to receive him. The days of the interim 
were full of happy thoughts, and the nights of happy 
dreams. 

Of the trip made alone to the East David has many 
amusing recollections. He was an inexperienced 
boy, and withal an inexperienced traveler. Every- 
thing he encountered he looked upon with wonder 
and amazement. 

200 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

He had heard much of the professional crooks who 
infest the highways of travel and flourish in the great 
cities, and he looked upon every stranger with eyes 
of suspicion. So he held on grimly to his pocketbook 
whenever he came near to anybody. When he had 
ended the first railroad division, and had to change 
cars for the next one, he encountered a phase of 
travel he had not before heard of. In the towns and 
cities of his native state, the railroads had never de- 
manded that you show your ticket before getting on 
the train. There one's first contact with railroad 
officials was not until the train was well under way 
and the conductor came round to punch the tickets. 
In the darkness of one evening David alighted from 
the incoming train, and regaled himself at the lunch 
counter, and took his baggage in hand to secure a 
seat on the outgoing train. 

"Let me see your ticket," was demanded in a firm 
voice by an individual standing at the portal of 
entrance. 

David said to himself, "Now, this is one of the fel- 
lows I have heard about. He wants to get my 
ticket and disappear and leave me in the lurch. So 
he said. "No I will not give you my ticket." 

The amused official said, "I guess you will before 
you get on this train." 

201 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

And David said, "We will see about it." After 
going the full length of the train and finding every 
door of every car locked he was obliged to come 
sneaking back and hand his ticket to the suspicious 
character whom he now recognized as a regularly 
commissioned employe of the railroad. It was for 
once a satisfaction to know that he was all alone and 
that there was nobody he ever expected to see again 
to witness his chagrin. 

On a detour through the south land he saw for 
the first time the great cotton plantations with their 
groups of colored laborers bending over the task of 
gathering the snow white balls of that staple product 
to be baled and shipped to northern factories. One 
dark evening on the Tennessee River he saw also 
for the first time a real steamboat in action. It was 
a double decker, and its bright lights illuminated the 
placid water of the river and the green wall of over- 
hanging branches which fringed its shores. To one 
who had never before seen navigable water, this 
huge aquatic vehicle was a sight most thrilling. 

Of the thoughts and emotions that came to the 
inexperienced boy in his first contact with the great 
cities he has a vivid recollection. The glitter of the 
lighted streets, the towering buildings, and the still 
higher monuments ; the great surging sea of hu- 
202 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

manity which springs forth with the dawn to inun- 
date the streets, and recoils with the darkness to se- 
quester itself in the seclusion of hovels or mansions ; 
the wreckage of human beings left behind like drift- 
wood on the pavements, without shelter, without 
food, without friends to comfort them ; the ghouls 
which haunt the back alleys and wallow like swine 
among the garbage cans and ash piles, the halt and 
the lame and the blind, whose importunity is the 
daily admonition for charity — these all were be- 
wilderingly new to the boy. One's heart grows 
sick at the thought of what ought to be done for re- 
lief and of one's limited ability to do it. The occa- 
sional coin he can afford to' bestow is like a drop of 
water added to the ocean. 

The great areas of tenement houses where people 
fester and rot with filth and disease are a blot on our 
civilization. When our national government learns 
to take as much care of its citizens as it does of its 
sick hogs and sheep, we shall have taken a great 
stride forward. The spots of dry rot which our cities 
contribute to the social map are appreciated in their 
full significance only by provincial recruits who have 
seen man as an ally of nature develop into physical 
perfection and moral stability. 

To this boy with his chaste unsullied thoughts 
203 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

which were the heritage of his rural extraction, the 
sight of vice and crime stalking forth without re- 
straint was most shocking. His life was pure and 
spotless as the great blue dome which arched above 
him. For the message of the forest and the wilder- 
ness to the unsophisticated mind is one of uncon- 
ditional chastity. Nature, when free to act, implants 
the dreams of angels in her children, and sends them 
forth with abiding confidence in the fidelity of others. 
Society is the antithesis of all these angel dreams. 
The city is a conspiracy against the honor of every 
man or woman who temporarily or permanently 
enters within its precincts. That does not mean that 
the majority go wrong, but it does mean that people 
who are reared in cities and have not the regenerat- 
ing influence of the contact of nature in their life 
must needs compensate for it by putting forth more 
character to offset the seductive influences they find 
themselves subjected to. 

And here is where religious training plays its most 
important role. How often do we see splendid young 
men and young women, unsophisticated in their 
minds, pure as angels in their thoughts, go into the 
terrible maelstrom we call the city and be lost to the 
world forever ! No sadder chapter of human exper- 
ience could ever be written than that which records 

204 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

the advent of inexperienced young men and young 
women from the country into the life of the city. 
The accusing angel must blush as he flies up to 
heaven's chancery with the word ; the recording angel 
must often blot the record with tears of pity. 

To his early religious training, and the high ideals 
of honor and of moral duty instilled into his mind by 
parents and spiritual advisers David accorded his full 
measure of obligation. He felt himself proof against 
temptation at all times and in all places. He saw 
weaklings lapsing from grace on every hand — young 
promising lives smitten by the blight of vice and 
crme, bright eyes and beaming countenances blurred 
by the inward consciousness of having fallen, while 
he was able to walk the royal way unscathed, thanks 
to the traditions of his people and the admonition of 
parents who had fortified him for the siege. 

It is a strange paradox that in our college courses 
we give out information on almost every phase of 
human life, except the one vital thing which is most 
significant of all in its bearing on individual happi- 
ness and social well being. We teach our students 
all about the physical and social conditions of the 
barbarians of Thibet and Timbuctoo, but never a 
word about the great laws of their own life and the 
transcendency of moral obligation. Daily, as phy- 
205 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

sicians, we meet men who are versed in Latin and 
Greek and calculus and the classics, who are still on 
the level of the savage in their moral conceptions 
and who are paying the penalty for their benighted 
condition by days of suffering and nights of remorse 
with the consciousness of loathsome disease gnawing 
at their vitals, and making them a menace to the 
generation in which they live, and to the third and 
fourth generation that is to follow after them. Con- 
sidering its present bearing and its far reaching 
effect the phase of ethics which deals with moral 
purity should be exalted to a prominent place in the 
curriculum. The contention implied, and not infre- 
quently expressed, that civilized men are permitted 
by social custom to descend to the level of savages 
in their moral obligations is a blot on our boasted 
civilization. The ignorance that still obtains of sex 
hygiene among our so-called educated classes is a 
reflection on our whole system of education. 

To follow a medical student through all the vari- 
able experiences of his course would be tedious work 
and without profit to compensate for the task. So 
we will get him fairly launched and leave him to his 
fate, until he emerges at the end where they turn 
out the finished product. 

The boy from the farm finds himself confronted 
206 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

with strange experiences on his first advent into the 
medical college. Full of all that zeal and intensive 
spirit which the new recruit brings from his rural set- 
ting, David eagerly pushed forward at an early hour 
to occupy one of the front seat in the operating 
theatre. On the morning's program came first two 
didactic lectures which were full of interest because 
of the strange subject matter they embraced. Then 
the huge double doors of the hospital swung open 
and an ambulating table was rolled in, upon which 
was placed the writhing, bleeding form of a man who 
had been liberally ripped up with a circular saw. 
Surgeons in white gowns soon came in and began 
removing some limbs and doing a patchwork of re- 
pair on the others. 

David felt a sensation creeping over him which he 
had never felt before. It would be disgraceful to 
faint in the presence of two hundred students, ready 
to scoff and jeer at the least intimation of it. But 
how to avoid it was a perplexing question. By dint 
of determined will power he continued to hold up 
his head. The aspirations of his life, however, were 
for the time being completely in abeyance. If ever 
he got out of that operating room alive, he thought, 
he would pack up his trunk and pull for home. 

The first contact with the dissecting rooms was a 
207 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

most revolting experience. To see human bodies, in 
part or in whole, handled as we handle merchandise, 
carved up like butcher's meat, stowed away like 
junk in a curiosity shop, or pickled in vats for future 
use, seemed such an antithesis of the old biblical 
doctrine of man in the image of his Creator that the 
mind of inexperience had hard work to harmonize 
the authority oif the scripture with the practices 
of modern times. 

It required but a few days of actual experience to 
become adapted to all the strange conditions of a 
medical student's life. David found himself fixed 
in the laboratories and dissecting rooms with a 
'fascination which grew in intensity as the months 
rolled away. 

Those were the twilight days of asepsis, and many 
of the leading surgeons were still contending about 
the role of bacteria in surgical fever and infected 
wounds. Naturally there were many infections and 
many fatalities. The last twenty years have shown 
a greater revolution in the science of surgery than 
in any other science, and the changes continue to 
come so swiftly that one is soon left in the rear if 
he does not visit often the great centers. It has 
become a beneficial factor in our social system, res- 
cuing many unfortunates from the clutches of death 
208 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

and restoring happiness and health to lives that have 
known suffering and discouragement. 

We can with profit skip over the routine work 
of a medical student's life, though many of his ex- 
periences were novel and dramatic. There were days 
of depression and days of exultation. There were 
duties that were pleasant and satisfactory, and there 
were duties that required courage and fortitude in 
their execution. Suffice it to say that a day came 
after long-drawn struggles and worries when the 
students all sat with bated breath while a registrar 
read from a lengthy paper the names of the success- 
full and of the unsuccessful candidates for the doc- 
tor's degree, and David's name was enumerated with 
the list of those who had passed with credit. , 

After a few days of relaxation and rest he settled 
down to apply himself to the clinics, and direct his 
energies to the more intricate problems of his chosen 
profession. 

But a great trial came into his life. In the pursuit 
of his duties among the sick and afflicted he con- 
tracted a disease which brought him near to death's 
door and left him a physical wreck. There was noth- 
ing left to him but to give up his high ambitions for 
the time being and return to his mountain home. 
This he did as soon as he had regained himself far 
209 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

enough to travel. The meeting with kindred and 
friends was pleasant enough after his long absence, 
though it was a great disappointment to be obliged 
to return so soon. 

Each section of this great earth has its charms for 
certain people, but the one hallowed spot to all of 
us is the place of our nativity. The soil that was 
mingled with our childish tears is sacred to us 
forever afterward, and our minds turn instinctively 
back to it as the needle points to the pole. David 
indulged the full emotion of the home coming as he 
saw the contour of his native hills loom over the 
horizon. A few weeks of repose at the old farm 
again brought back the color to his cheek, and his 
mental batteries soon became recharged and ready 
for action. 

The conditions which confronted the beginning 
physician of twenty years ago in the country towns 
were rather discouraging, though they had their 
compensating features in the development of initi- 
ative and resourcefulness, which followed as a reg- 
ular sequence as the bright outline of a picture de- 
velops out of the dull negative. The man who has 
always done his operative work amidst the inviron- 
ment of first class hospitals with well-trained as- 
sistants, would find himself greatly at a loss if he 
210 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

were called to operate in some meagre private home 
without help and where everything had to be impro- 
vised for the occasion. 

The technique of twenty years ago, although based 
upon the aseptic, or rather the antiseptic plan, was 
still far from perfection. In the hospitals men were 
playing to the galleries with a bizarre display of all 
the colors of the rainbow in their permanganate of 
potash and oxalic acid and bichloride of mercury. 
The supreme importance of simple soap and water 
had not been appreciated. Instead of trying to make 
the exclusion of bacteria absolute, surgeons were 
content to permit a few to enter their wounds and 
then try to kill them off with antiseptic drugs. 

The country physician of twenty years ago was 
like a light upon a hill. If he had a fatality in his 
practice it was heralded far and wide in every direc- 
tion. In the country where everybody knows every- 
body else, the news of a mischance travels like elec- 
tricity. But in the city where we hardly know our 
next door neighbor, no such notoriety attaches to the 
cases we fail to cure. 

Twenty years ago in our country towns the 

physician had to fight his way against the prejudices 

of the people. His advent into their communities 

was an innovation which many were inclined to look 

211 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

upon with suspicion. To the minds of many he 
seemed to be in league with the powers of evil and 
when necessity came, they called him in grudgingly 
with the thought that they were capitulating to some 
sinister power which they would gladly avoid if 
possible. The ignorance of the old women of the 
village was a sufficient guarantee that they were not 
in league with the Devil. But the young physician 
who could boast of a knowledge of anatomy and 
pathology, and gave a reasonable explanation of dis- 
ease from the material standpoint enjoyed no such 
exemption. Many times he was called in at the last 
moment when everything else had failed, and his 
reputation had to suffer not from his own lack of 
information, but from the superstitious dread of his 
patrons. 

The country physician had a hard and sometimes 
a thankless lot. At any and all hours of the night 
he was called to brave the storms of winter and 
travel over roads which were difficult and dangerous. 
Often he had many nights in succession without 
sleep, and with such food only as he could procure 
from the poor farm houses and ranches that flanked 
his way. In rickety old houses where the wind 
howled through the crevices he often spent his 
nights, and faced problems alone which tested his 

212 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

nerve to the utmost. Not infrequently he made 
long journeys through many hardships, paying his 
hotel bills and livery bills by the way, and receiving 
for compensation only the promise of a worthless 
wretch who never paid him and never intended to 
pay. 

Some there were who were unkind and never ap- 
preciated the service he rendered. Sometimes he 
was blamed and severely censured for things over 
which he had no control, and he had to endure the 
imputation of having motives in his life which he 
never dreamed of. Sometimes they laughed to scorn 
his altruistic visions. 

But there was a positive side to this picture which 
furnished ample compensation to balance the account 
with a goodly margin of satisfaction besides. The 
love and respect of those who did comprehend and 
appreciate was expressed with just as much em- 
phasis as was the disapproval of his enemies. Almost 
daily the mails brought boxes of flowers and other 
tokens of the good will of his patrons, and these 
things have more of the real substance of compensa- 
tion in them than anything else in the world. 

Money, though a necessary reward for our service, 
is but dross compared with the uncoined specie of 
the human heart we call appreciation. What a thing 

213 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

it is to have people believe in you ! The best, the 
highest motives of our life are invoked by the faith 
of others. We strive above all things to maintain 
ourselves upon the pedestal where we are placed by 
our friends. The criminal at the bar of justice 
winces not at the verdict which consigns him to the 
gallows or to a life of ignominy behind prison bars, 
but the announcement of his crime in the daily paper 
where all his friends may read about it is the thing 
that cuts him to the quick. The opinion of our 
fellow man is the greatest of all the incentives in 
life. It is the force back of the soldier when he risks 
his life amidst the hail of bullets ; it is the impulse 
back of the explorer when he penetrates the wilds 
of trackless continents or faces the untold hardships 
of the frigid polar regions ; it is the great all-pervad- 
ing background of our whole system of ethics, hold- 
ing people with its iron grasp to the line of duty in 
spite of their weakness and in defiance of their 
temptation. It demands concessions from the miser 
whose yellow gold is more vital to him than the red 
blood of his veins. Before its all-powerful spell, 
selfishness bends, pride condescends, and the whole 
rank and file of humanity lifts itself to a higher 
altruistic level. 

And the physician above all people is influenced 
214 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

by the attitude of approval or disapproval of his 
patrons. The one who expects him to do so much 
cold-blooded work for so many dollars and cents, 
and comes to him with fears and reservations, ap- 
peals only to the mercenary side of his life, and will 
be treated with the same motive which the grocer 
has when he gives honest weight and measure be- 
cause of the expediency of being honest. But the 
one who comes to the physician in a spirit of abso- 
lute surrender and says, "I lay the burden of my life 
at your feet, I have unbounded confidence ; give 
forth only the word and I shall obey," is the one who 
makes a bid for the sum total of his manhood, and 
no sacrifice is too great to compensate such confi- 
dence. It is to such that the profession of physician 
owes its dignity and its exaltation. 

There is a certain crudeness about the mind of one 
who speaks of his surgeon as a butcher, and jests 
about his physician filling untimely graves, which 
the author of these papers can never tolerate. The 
butcher, in the harshest, most unscientific way, severs 
vital tissues for the express purpose of destroying 
life, while the surgeon, with a minute knowledge of 
anatomy which has cost part of his very life to ac- 
quire, makes the necessary readjustments of our 
body with a precision that is born of the full con- 
215 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

sciousness of the sacredness of that life before God, 
resolving each time to do his utmost to preserve and 
not destroy that which has been entrusted to his 
care. The physician who has the instinct of his 
calling enters into the real spirit of every bedside 
tragedy that confronts him, making common cause 
with all those who are hanging breathless on the 
issue. He exults with them in the hour of victory 
and mingles his tears with theirs in the hour of de- 
feat. He is willing to endure every hardship that 
his patrons may have the full measure of his potency, 
and that his conscience may be satisfied that in the 
work of each day he has met loyally the sacred con- 
fidence which was imposed in him and done his full 
duty. I am painfully aware of the fact that phy- 
sicians and surgeons are not invariably men of the 
class here indicated. There are unscrupulous men 
in all professions. The urgency of the need of sick 
people for help gives opportunity for the man with- 
out a conscience to take advantage of the confidence 
too easily imposed in him. Human vultures there 
are in all departments of life — men who delight in 
the importunities of their fellow men for the ad- 
vantage it offers. 

But I speak of the rank and file of the profession, 
and class them without hesitation as men with an 

216 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

altruistic motive, and many of them as real philan- 
thropists. They are not as a rule, sounding a trum- 
pet when they do charitable things, but untold thou- 
sands of people of each generation can bear testimony 
to their devotion to the cause of the poor and the 
needy. Boorhave, the greatest physician of the late 
mediaeval period, used to say, "I like to treat poor 
people, for God is their paymaster." In the great 
cities of Europe are individual men who number 
their charity patients by the thousands, and they are 
moving in the even tenor of their way, and render- 
ing this colossal service with hearts full of love and 
compassion. 

Like all other people, the men of the medical pro- 
fession have to bear the odium of the unsavory name 
of the worst element of their calling. The penumbra 
around the borders of the real domain of medical 
science is peopled by a motley group of mountebanks 
and frauds and pretenders who are weaving spider 
webs of all sizes and descriptions to entangle the 
unwary and victimize the over-credulous multitude. 

Knowing the psychology of bold assertion, they 
are indulging in the most extravagant claims, and 
professing with brazen-faced effrontery to do things 
which are plainly impossible. Their name is legion, 
and in each succeeding generation they put forth a 
217 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

new front to meet the popular demand for delusion. 
Though they group themselves together into many 
diverse cults, they have one motive which is common 
to them all — the substitution of actual knowledge of 
medicine and surgery by some absurd theory of the 
nature and cause of disease. 

It is a wonderful thing in this world of ours that 
there is such a multitude of people who seek dark- 
ness rather than light, and who cleave to error rather 
than truth. The medical profession at all times and 
in all places has been beset by delusions which have 
often been so gross and palpable as to call in question 
the sanity of the multitudes who have believed in 
them. Ancient errors have cast their shadow far 
into the daylight of modern times. From the cure 
of scrofula by the king's touch, which is less than a 
century old, through the fallacy of Perkins' tractors, 
and the imaginary power of infinitesimal divisions 
of medicines, down to the negation of all diseases by 
the Christian Science cult, we have a chain of delu- 
sions which connects us up with the chimeras of the 
middle ages. In all other departments of life super- 
stition runs its course and comes to its natural end- 
ing. But in medical matters, the delusion, when it 
meets with stern facts, instead of capitulating, sim- 
ply shifts its base, puts on a new front and goes on 

218 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

as if nothing had happened. The king's touch is 
no more, Perkins' tractors have gone by the way, 
homeopathy is weak and tottering, but Christian 
Science is flourishing with more vigor than any of 
them, and embracing in its fold not only the vulgar 
and ignorant, but the educated and refined. 

As a counter balance against all this delusional 
phase of our great profession and the disgusting 
spectacle of people being duped and imposed upon, 
there is great satisfaction in the wonderful strides 
medicine and especially surgery is making. Twenty 
years have meant a revolution in this science and art. 
Old theories have been so rapidly submerged in the 
rising tide of enlightenment that it is hard to keep 
one's balance. The light of the modern day has 
penetrated so many dark recesses that one wonders 
if any great problem will remain unsolved. Twenty 
years ago we were in the twilight of our knowledge 
of bacteriology and its relationship to disease. There 
were men of eminent standing who would not accept 
the germ theory, and who always contended against 
it to the day of their death. 

Twenty years ago antiseptic surgery was still the 
dominating thing and the carbolic acid spray which 
poisoned surgeon and patient alike was still in evi- 
dence. The author of these papers has a vivid 

219 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

memory of seeing operators in frock suits handling 
alternately the bones of the skeleton and the instru- 
ments with which he was about to cleave them on 
the living subject as he disported himself in hilarious 
dissertations before the admiring throng of medical 
students who never failed to be present at the sur- 
gical clinic. In those days some bold surgeons ven- 
tured to open the abdominal cavity, and worked with 
bated breath to get out of it as quickly as possible, 
leaving always behind drainage tubes to be subjected 
to suction at stated intervals, in the hope that by this 
means peritonitis would be averted. 

The great world-wide controversy over appen- 
dicitis has been mostly within the last twenty years. 
The graphic combination of symptoms which the 
trained surgeon of the present day can interpret over 
the telephone as the certain indicators of that ubiqui- 
tous malady, were variously believed to be the symp- 
toms of four or five different imaginary diseases. 
The surgeon when confronted with the classic symp- 
tom complex which the laity of this day have learned 
to interpret, could take his choice between typhlitis, 
paratyhlitis, perityphlitis and appendicitis. Early 
operation was unheard of. Always the surgeon 
waited for an abscess to form before he thought of 
interfering, and the mortality of that dreaded disease 
220 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

was appalling. It is no wonder that people insisted 
on making their will before being operated on for 
appendicitis. The issue very frequently vindicated 
the wisdom of that extreme precaution. At the 
present day the only great worry is that the case will 
be delayed into the dangerous period. Early opera- 
tion in skillful hands is almost always successful. 
To American surgery is due the credit for this great 
victory. 

Twenty years ago the operation for goitre was 
such a formidable thing that only the boldest sur- 
geons would undertake it, and the mortality was 
appalling. At the present time the most critical 
cases of that fearful malady are so skillfully managed 
by the well trained surgeon that patients are rescued 
from their peril with comparatively little danger. 

Twenty years ago the human stomach was one 
terra incognita from the surgeon's viewpoint. Ulcer 
and cancer of the stomach were permitted to run 
their dreaded course unchallenged. The author of. 
these papers has a vivid picture in his memory of the 
agonizing symptoms which an ulcer of this important 
organ produces. 

My father was afflicted with it for many years, 
and finally died as a result of its complications. 
Nobody even knew in that day what was the matter 
221 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

with him, though the clinical picture as it comes 
down in memory was so clean cut and precise that 
there could be no question of its meaning - . He lived 
almost to the time of surgical relief and passed out 
just in the twilight hour of stomach surgery. Ten 
years later he could easily have been cured by an 
operation which would have involved very little risk. 
If I could but turn the dial hand of time backward 
twenty years and render to him who had done so 
much for me the relief which surgical science of this 
day and age could easily bestow, it would be one of 
the greatest satisfactions of my life. 

Cancer of the stomach is attacked in these days the 
same as cancer of any other organ. In its early 
stages, the outlook after thorough removal is better 
than it is when the involvement is of any other vital 
organ. Armed with his full array of sterilized linen 
and rubber gloves, the surgeon invades abdominal 
and brain cavities with little fear of consequences. 
He boldly attacks the prostrate gland and removes it 
instead of consigning its victims to certain death, as 
was the case twenty years ago. 

Diphtheria at that time had a mortality of forty to 
fifty per cent, and sometimes whole families of chil- 
dren were swept away by its ravishes. With the aid 
of the modern antitoxine it is so robbed of its terror 
222 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

that people no longer fear it. The only trouble the 
physician of this day has, is to make people believe 
afterward that they really had diphtheria. They are 
cured so quickly that they are left in doubt as to the 
correctness of the diagnosis. 

Twenty years ago the physician used to delight in 
giving huge doses of medicine, often compounding 
half a dozen remedies into the same prescription, 
expecting in that way to meet each individual 
symptom the patient complained of and offset them 
all at once by the appropriate antidote. To make 
these polyvalent mixtures palatable was considered 
to be an art worthy of much attention. 

To-day we have learned that almost all of the 
acute infections are self-limited and will cure them- 
selves if we but give nature a chance to assert itself. 
The Creator has provided in our bodies the means 
of our own cure. Whenever a poison, whether chem- 
ical or bacterial comes into our system, the body cells 
begin forthwith to manufacture the antidote of it, 
and as soon as they produce enough antidote to neu- 
tralize all the poison present, we get well. The 
symptoms of disease are the manifestations of a 
poison that the disease germs are pouring into our 
blood. The fever and pain and loss of appetite are 
indicators of the amount of poison we are receiving, 

223 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

and of our individual resistance to it. The body 
cells throw themselves with great energy into the 
task of manufacturing the particular antidote re- 
quired, and when they have produced enough of it 
to neutralize all the poison present, we reach the 
crisis of the disease and begin to recover. Some- 
times, as in acute pneumonia, the crisis comes sud- 
denly, when the whole picture is changed in a few 
hours from one of great distress and danger to one 
of comfort and perfect safety. Sometimes the end 
is not so dramatic, but the struggle between invading 
bacteria and the cells of the body is drawn out 
through many days, and often through many weeks, 
and, when the issue is finally decided, the patient is 
left a wreck of his former self, requiring months to 
regenerate his depleted tissues. 

But every case of acute infection involves the same 
antagonistic issue between poison-producing bacteria 
which have established their colonies somewhere in 
the body, and the defensive tissue cells which engage 
themselves in a life-and-death struggle to neutralize 
the poison which would otherwise destroy them. 

And it is the recognition of this great law of na- 
ture which has completely changed our attitude to- 
ward disease and pointed out the way of the future 
development of medical science. We no longer im- 
224 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

agine that we keep antidotes corked up in bottles on 
the apothecaries' shelves, but we realize that we must 
get in league with nature, make our efforts to accel- 
erate her processes, and prevent them from being 
impeded. 

In some diseases, such as diphtheria and hydro- 
phobia and tetanus, science has penetrated into the 
domain of nature's laboratory, and learned some of 
her processes, but she had been loath to give up her 
secrets. Acquired immunity has offered many baf- 
fling problems, but the encroachment upon it which 
each year of determined effort is making, augurs 
well for the future. We know that each self-limited 
infection involves the same process of antidote-pro- 
duction. We know that there is a great law of self- 
preservation established by the Creator in our bodies, 
to work automatically whenever danger impends. 
Each acute infection lasts a variable period, until 
this law has a chance to assert itself, when it recedes 
and leaves behind only the depleted vitality which re- 
sulted from the struggle. We know, furthermore, 
that the antidote which nature produces to cure the 
acute infection becomes in general a fixed quantity 
which prevents us from acquiring the same disease 
in the future. 

Along some lines we have been able to unravel a 
225 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

part of the mystery of acquired immunity. We have 
discovered segments of the circle, which some day 
in the future are to be joined together in perfect 
symmetry. The medical profession at the present 
juncture is sadly in need of one of those generalizing 
intellects which have apeared so often in the world 
of science, to group all the fragments of accumulated 
knowledge into a system and initiate a new epoch. 

The last half century and particularly the last 
twenty years have produced such splendid results 
that we have all hope for the future. The practical 
application of Listerism, Roentgen rays, antitoxine, 
and the enormous development of technique which 
has lifted surgery into the domain of the exact sci- 
ences, are but the accumulated daily bulletins of the 
last twenty years. The one great burning question 
of the hour, which has proved itself more stubborn 
than all the rest, is that of the explanation of cancer. 
Not even a glimmer of light has come from this dark 
field of research. 

But we are digressing too far. We are to go back 
to the position of the country doctor of twenty years 
ago. 

He was obliged to do such operating as he did do 
in private homes, utilizing the domestic furniture 
for his equipment. The table he placed his patient 

226 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

on was often the one which served as dining table for 
the family. The cooking utensils were variously em- 
ployed to sterilize his instruments and dressings. 
Often, he had to stand in the way like the angel with 
the flaming sword before the garden of Eden, to 
prevent his multitudinous lay visitors from soiling 
his linen or contaminating his instruments. As many 
people as could pack into the room would crowd in 
and the windows were darkened by the heads of 
inquisitive spectators. Not infrequently one and 
sometimes a number of these people would fall in a 
faint while the operation was in progress. Denied 
the help of trained nurses or assistants, the country 
doctor had to utilize his neighbors as best he could 
to render such assistance as was imperatively de- 
manded during the progress of his operation. To 
have one farmer giving the anaesthetic, and another, 
scrubbed up and dressed with a mother-hubbard 
apron, to hand him his instruments and hold retrac- 
tors, was an experience common to the rural prac- 
titioner of twenty years ago. A surgeon who has 
since risen to eminence told me of an occasion when 
he was amputating a leg under circumstances of this 
kind. In the midst of the procedure it was an- 
nounced that the roof of the house was on fire. 
Whereupon the doctor divided his forces and sent 

227 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

part of his farmer allies to extinguish the flames, 
while he with the rest of them went on with the 
operation. In spite of dust and smoke and cinders, 
and the questionable asepsis of the hands of men who 
had done only the hard work of the farm, the wound 
healed well and the patient made a good recovery. 

I wish to pay my tribute of respect to the good 
people who came to our assistance in these emergen- 
cies. It is surprising how much common sense there 
is in the make-up of the average individual of the 
laboring classes when we take pains to call it into 
action. The denizen of the city who imagines that 
there is no refinement and no soul outside of his 
urban precincts has but a limited outlook on life. 
Take from him the thin veneer of polish which 
comes from the attrition of social contact, and he 
bears no comparison with his brother who has been 
tutored in the school of nature, and had his instincts 
developed along wholesome lines. The fine abandon 
with which these people take up the cause of their 
neighbors when in affliction, and enter into the 
real tragedy of their life, making all kinds of sacri- 
fices when occasion demands it, without thought of 
compensation or reward, reflects a spirit of fraternal- 
ism which is unknown to the wealthy classes gen- 
erally or to the residents of cities. When the phy- 

228 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

sician had to make a journey, in those days, to reach 
his patient or was obliged to render continuous ser- 
vice for some hours in a household, the good matron 
would put herself to great inconvenience to provide 
him with the best food and the most comfortable 
quarters her home could furnish. But in the cities 
the physician is called in much as the plumber or the 
carpenter is called. He is expected to look out for 
his own entertainment. And if his service continues 
beyond the breakfast hour he indulges in a fast day 
until his task is ended. Our social methods of the 
city boast of much more refinement, but they do not 
always bring the greatest amount of comfort possible 
into our lives. Each phase of life has its compensa- 
tions. If we draw the balance we may find that 
there is not so much difference in the sum total of 
advantages in the country and in the city as we might 
imagine. 

The country physician of twenty years ago was, 
as a rule, the only practitioner in his respective town. 
He had nobody to share his worries and responsi- 
bilities with, and nobody to join him in consultation 
when his cases were perplexing and difficult. The 
author of these papers has vivid recollections of 
times when he felt that the burdens of the world 
were upon him. How often he looked up at the 
229 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

great red cliff that flanked his native town, and 
weighed his life with all its anxieties against the 
record of this stupendous book of time until he 
seemed but a mote in the sunbeam, and his worries 
and perplexities but momentary incidents in the 
great world process. The aeons were a consolation 
to his troubled soul, and the untold centuries shed 
their mantle of peace upon him. 

The country physician naturally entered into all 
the social and political activities of his community, 
and lived the real life of the people he associated 
with. When he was unwise enough to take a strong 
partisan stand, and announce himself with too much 
emphasis against the party which opposed him, it 
made a division in his patronage and alienated many 
whose loyalty would have continued to be a great 
advantage. The physician who depends on all 
creeds and parties for his patronage has no more 
business mixing in partisan strife than has the prom- 
inent church man, who cannot afford to have his 
flock divided against him. 

The physician who really became a moving force 
in a community naturally met with that opposition 
which obstructs the way of all those who do things. 
If you are content to be a dead-head and do a tread- 
mill business forever, you can be assured of the con- 

230 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

solation that nobody will oppose you or say hard 
things about you. But whenever you begin to move 
out of the pace which has been set by the average 
citizen, you will produce friction, and the more rapid 
your strides, the greater will be the opposition you 
will encounter. The meteor which has come to rest 
upon the mountain side is cool and opaque as the 
country boulders which lie all around it. But when 
it was in action in its transit from the sidereal depths 
to the earth's surface, the resistance it encountered 
in ether and atmosphere were sufficient to raise its 
temperature to the point of incandescence. When 
one develops philosophy enough to comprehend that 
the opposition of his fellows is but the working out 
of a sociological law which is common to all times 
and all places and all people, he will cease to think 
of his opponents as deliberate persecutors. That 
very resistance which society collectively, and some 
individuals particularly, are throwing in your way 
will do more to develop your initiative and bring out 
the latent elements of your soul than any other one 
thing in the world. Thank God, then, for the ob- 
structionist. He is an asset which comparatively 
few of the rank and file of society have the privilege 
of claiming as an individual possession. He and his 
kind are the negative of a picture from which is to be 
231 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

produced the clean-cut outlines of your personality 
one day in the future — of that personality which is 
not described in terms of form or color, but in the 
aggregate of all those soul characteristics which en- 
ter into the make-up of a God-like man. 

We are all prone to think too seriously of the hard 
things that are said of us. When a man is working 
with all conscience and making untold sacrifices for 
his patrons and his friends, it seems such a wicked 
thing that people should put evil into his life that 
he has never dreamed of, and impute motives to him 
which are known only to people of the basest kind. 
But when he rises to the philosophical view-point 
and comprehends that the very people who say those 
things do not believe them, but are attempting in this 
way to fill in the; gap with some measure of plausi- 
bility between your success and their failure, the 
whole thing has a different significance. We are 
advertised much more by our enemies than by our 
friends. If you shake the tree you scatter its seeds 
abroad. From the darkest cloud springs the most 
vivid gleams of the forked lightning, as from the 
darkest picture of calumny comes forth the elements 
of human character which indicate the Divinity of 
our pedigree. 

The lives of Martin Luther, of Savonarola, and 
232 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

of Jesus of Nazareth were all intensified by the dense 
negative which was produced by their detractors. 
We would not have known the Sermon on the Mount 
if it had not come as the antithesis of the lives of 
those who traduced its author. 

It is said that physicians, and especially country 
physicians, are prone to develop alcoholism and the 
drug addictions. I believe there is some measure of 
truth in this, and perhaps some measure of justifica- 
tion, when we consider the hardships they have to 
endure and the disappointments which are incident 
to their lives. In all walks of life, rectitude is but 
a relative thing. No human being ever lives the life 
in actual practice which he holds in his conscious- 
ness as the ideal. But when we pass in judgment 
upon a man's virtues we do not stop to think of the 
temptations he has resisted. We expect him to walk 
faultless where we ourselves might falter. 

Temptation was placed in the world that we 
might grow strong by resisting it. And they who 
develop the greatest strength are they who have 
known the greatest temptation. Do not think that you 
have known virtue until you have walked the ragged 
edge of fate and seen hell yawning at the bottom. 
When you feel your feet secure far back from the 
precipice, you appreciate the poise and the renewed 
233 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

strength which that agonizing hour brought into 
your life. The palsied virtue of disuse is not virtue 
at all. It is like the palsied muscle which fails us on 
the first occasion when its strength is required to 
meet some emergency. Not in passive indifference, 
but in real life-and-death struggles, does nature deal 
out her admonitions which make us grow strong and 
valiant. Everything in this world is balanced against 
its antithesis. If we covet the big things in life, and 
desire to possess the attributes of character which 
stand not in a passive but in an active relationship 
to the world's great problems, we must be willing to 
pay the price which God has set upon them. The 
mere drifter may get some of the satisfaction which 
comes by the pull of gravity that directs him always 
to a lower level, but only to him who is willing to 
stem the current and ascend by force the rugged 
channel of the river will open up the vista of the 
sublime heights where all things have their source. 

An account of the experiences of the successful 
country doctor and the conditions and problems he 
had to meet is an epitome of the life of him whose 
fortunes we have been following. David sounded 
the depths and shoals of human experience. He 
knew the exultation of victory ; he knew the depres- 
sion of defeat. In the hard school of experience he 

234 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

was tutored. Sometimes his disappointment was so 
great that he felt that all was lost and that he must 
acknowledge failure. Sometimes in hours of victory- 
he felt as though the world was at his feet. He 
made his mistakes as people always have done since 
father Adam was tempted to eat the forbidden fruit. 
He knew agonizing hours of trial and temptation 
and disappointment. 

How little we think when we meet people in the 
ordinary walks of life and observe only the agreeable 
surface play of their personality, which society de- 
mands and which business relationships make im- 
perative, how deep the tragedy may be that is going 
on within and how terrible the struggle that hides 
itself away behind a smiling countenance. But I 
would rather live with my foot on the hot iron half 
the time and feel that for the rest of it I was doing 
the deeds of a real man, than to slide along in ease 
and comfort and indifference to the world without 
rising to its opportunities, without feeling the exulta- 
tion of its victories. 

Our David believed that one of the most essential 
elements of success is to go straight to the heart 
of things, and deal with the main issue first and con- 
sider the preliminaries and the prefaces afterward. 
He always took time by the forelock and got on the 
235 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

ground when there was something doing. He moved 
with all the celerity possible to meet every event of 
his life and rendered quick decisions when emergen- 
cies came. 

Sometimes your swift-moving general will run 
into the ambush of the enemy, and sometimes he 
will sunder his phalanx by the very celerity of his 
movements. The effect of quick action, barring ac- 
cidents, is in general dual. It increases the enthu- 
siasm of the attacking party, and it overawes the 
party which is put on the defensive. We cannot 
afford, of course, to be reckless of our armament and 
equipment, but when all things are in readiness we 
should strike with all the speed and all the force we 
possess if we expect to win victories. 

For many long years the highways and the by- 
ways of his native section knew well by day and 
by night the rumble of the swift-moving vehicle 
of our country doctor friend. Separated from the 
profession of the city by a distance so great that its 
aid was difficult to procure, he was obliged to under- 
take many things which would otherwise have gone 
into more experienced hands. The training in tech- 
nique and method which resulted were to have a far- 
reaching influence over his life in the after years 
when he was to enter into competition with the men 

236 



YEARS THAT BRING WISDOM 

in the city. He grasped the flying moments to 
regale himself on such advances in his profession as 
the journals and the new editions of medical and 
surgical authors brought to him. He traveled in his 
native land and in foreign countries for purposes 
of study as often as his moderate finances would per- 
mit. Twice he came home from these trips for study 
utterly penniless. 

He took an active part in all the social and 
political affairs of the locality where he resided. 
He knew the advantage of the loyal support and 
abiding confidence of many friends whose fealty 
he has never had occasion to doubt; he knew the 
bitterness of a few enemies whose vindictive hatred 
saw evil motives in everything he tried to ac- 
complish. No lukewarm allegience ever falls to the 
lot of men of action. They are loved by their friends 
and hated by their enemies. 

One beautiful summer morning he stood upon the 
elevated slope of the mountain side which flanked 
his native town, and looked out over the rough dusty 
roads which lead away in every direction. He thought 
of all the hardships he had endured and the strug- 
gles he had made. A new thought came to him. 
He said to himself, "It is finished. This chapter 
has come to its logical ending, henceforth my compe- 
237 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

tition is to be with the men of the city." The plan 
of his transition to this new theatre of action took 
tangible form, and was soon carried into execution. 

Of the new world that opened up to him immedi- 
ately with the change; of all the successes profes- 
sional, financial and social which resulted from it; 
of successful competition with men who had stood 
prominent in his chosen pursuit but little need be 
said. Some day in the future this theme may be 
amplified. 

Presently we shall call the roll of the old familiar 
group who played the game of chance, after which 
we shall permit our David to make his exit in a short 
soliloquy which marks the ending of this little book. 



238 



CHAPTER XI 

ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

T a very early age David had come up against 
the so-called conflict between religion and 
science, and all through high school and college, and 
for the many busy years which succeeded them, his 
mind had been much occupied with the problems 
involved in this most interesting of all controversies. 
He felt at first that it was sinful to allow himself to 
think of such things, because the best reputed people 
of the little circle in which he moved said that it was 
dangerous to call in question any of the fixed re- 
ligious opinions, or to speculate in any way outside 
of the crystallized forms of thought involved in dog- 
matic religion. 

A riper mentality has convinced him that there is 
a good measure of truth in their contention, and that 
many men have made shipwreck of all faith and 
have foundered on the rocks of modern specula- 
tion. 

But how could one stop the clicking of this terri- 
ble mental escapement which God had started in 
motion? The most momentous of all the problems 
239 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

involved in this mundane existence is that which 
pertains to the hope of immortality. Without that 
hope all is vain and of no lasting consequence. Why 
then should any human being be denied the right to 
think about it, to weigh evidence pro and con, and 
to look into every man's theory in search of the 
truth. Where all other lines of thought are evolv- 
ing and developing why should our religious thought 
be stationary? 

Between the extreme position of the ultra-religious 
man, who held to the absolute letter of scripture 
and predicted perdition for all who dared to veer in 
the least degree from the well defined outlines of 
traditional thought, and the so-called scientific man, 
who scoffed at all forms and ridiculed all creeds, 
there was little consolation to be found by the honest 
plodder, who did not wish to break away from the 
old moorings, but who wished to keep an open mind 
ever ready for the truth. 

Thanks to the liberalizing process of the years 
there is no longer manifest that hard and clean-cut 
line between these two classes of people that there 
used to be. Both parties have conceded, and we 
have now a compromise position in which we dare 
to speak our ultimate conviction without running 
the risk of social ostracism on one side, or being set 
240 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

down as mentally weak on the other side. We have 
learned the great lesson of toleration. God never 
made two leaves alike, nor two blades of grass of 
the same pattern ; and He never made two human 
beings of exactly the same mentality. We must 
have liberty to think or we can never progress. And 
David has fought out in silence during all these 
years many problems involved in this momentous 
question. Some degree of stability seems to have 
come to him, and the grounds upon whichi it rests 
will be put forth as the following excursion into the 
domain of life's philosophy. 

Away out in space there, as far as the eye of 
man aided by the modern miracles of optics can 
penetrate, we perceive the presence of inexorable 
law. In the minutest living organism, visible only 
by being magnified a thousand times, the same reg- 
ular, inevitable conditions are manifest. Law, order, 
everywhere law and order, which operates with such 
precision that its processes can be computed for mil- 
lions of years in the future to the hair's breadth of 
time and space. The planets revolve in their fixed 
orbits with unvarying exactness. The great siderial 
clockwork never jumps a cog. The oceans, though 
sometimes stirred into fury by the passing storms are 
yet true to the law of gravitation and never transcend 

241 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

the dead line which the continents have raised against 
them. The valleys, the everlasting hills, though 
shaken oftentimes with the earthquake, or excoriated 
by the fierce storm, are yet true to the contour which 
nature imposed upon them when they arose from 
the slime of the mighty deep. The seasons come 
and go in regular sequence, measuring off time as 
with an escapement, which is inexorable in its ex- 
actness. 

The universe with all its component parts is but 
the working out of a great foreordained system of 
law. Not a molecule can escape its Omnipotent 
grasp. The instinct of the bee makes it the mes- 
senger of love for the flower and the collector of 
ambrosial food for man. The flower breathes its 
perfume into the air to attract the bee and spreads 
its gaudy petals in the summer sun in display of the 
love message it has to send to its kindred flower. 
True to its peculiar instinct it fulfills its own life's 
functions through the assistance that it bestows on 
others. The same interdependence is everywhere 
manifest in nature. No single thing could exist 
apart from the great aggregate that goes to make up 
the universe. The systole and diastole of the life 
current on our great mother Earth brings seedtime 
and harvest. The plant inhales the gas that is poison 

242 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

to the animal and converts it into forces that are in- 
dispensable to animal life. All things are made sub- 
servient to the animal and plant life, which came 
upon the earth in due process of time to appropriate 
the forces that were designed for its service from 
before the beginning of time. 

And what is this thing we call life that has taken 
possession of the universe and laid all things under 
tribute to itself? Is it some occult force, born of 
the mysteries of chemistry and liberated in the 
nascent state of molecules? Is it the music of 
the seolean harp which vibrates with the passing 
breeze and ceases when the harp becomes unstrung? 
Or is it an entity superimposed upon all the dead 
forces of nature, and utilizing them in the working 
out of its vital functions ? The answer to this most 
pertinent question we may be pardoned for passing 
up for a while, until we shall have discussed some 
of the minor problems leading up to it. 

We may ask ourselves, first, Does the life of man 
differ from the life of the animal and the life of the 
plant? and, if so, is the difference in the quality or 
the quantity of the life element ? Whatever our ex- 
planation, I can think only of a common genesis for 
all living things. Whether by a special act of Provi- 
dence or by a graduated process with a million-year 
243 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

measuring tape to compute the length of it, we must 
agree that it is all a part of the one great plan, and 
that the same general laws are manifest in its elab- 
oration. Think how many things we have in com- 
mon with the animals. Anatomically they possess 
potentially every organ we possess. They have 
lungs to breathe with, they have stomach and intes- 
tines to digest with, the eye of both is identical in its 
mechanism, the ear, the heart, the blood vessels, the 
plan of the integument. The peculiarity of arrange- 
ment of the bones of the limbs, with one long bone 
extending from the trunk to its articulation with two 
parallel smaller bones, which in turn articulate with 
five separate digits is a type that embraces the world 
of vertebrates from man at the head of the kingdom 
through every form of animal which has a back- 
bone, even to the fowls that fly in the air and the 
whales that swim in the mighty deep. Bones, mus- 
cles, nerves, connective tissue, joints, glands, mem- 
branes, are identical. The digestive juices are 
chemically the same, and the brain though differing 
in form and size is yet constructed on the same prin- 
ciple. The instincts we possess and many of our men- 
tal processes are variously manifested by different 
animal species. The special senses are in general 
more acute with them than with us. I think we must 
244 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

agree, then, that the life of the animal is essentially 
the same kind of life as the life of man. 

The identity of plant and animal life is not so 
strikingly apparent, and yet the same microscopic 
cellular structure, and the same vital processes are 
manifestly demonstrable, even in the lowest type of 
vegetable life. Down at the lowest vital levels it is 
a matter of some difficulty to decide sometimes 
whether particular organisms should be classified as 
plants or animals. The plant which draws its sus- 
tenance directly from the soil seems to be the inter- 
mediary between the chaos of dead matter and the 
more highly organized forms. The plant breathes, 
and its life blood circulates. It is nature's first great 
chemist, which builds up the molecular formulas for 
the higher types of life. 

Down at the basis of things there must be a gen- 
eralization of the life principle, and its source must 
be the same for all organized forms. When you 
force air through one aperture of a flute, you get a 
high-pitch note, and when you force it through an- 
other you get a low-pitch note ; but it is all the same 
kind of atmosphere. So with the life principle. Or- 
ganic forms from the moneron to the man are in- 
telligent just to the extent that their physical being 
can focus the intelligence of God from the universe. 
245 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

If we accept the theory of evolution, which seems 
to have at least a good background of evidence, the 
correlation of the various forms of life is at once 
apparent. The great Soul of the Universe, Spirit of 
God, or whatever you choose to call it, is elaborating 
a plan, which manifests life in an ever ascending 
scale as the ages roll away, and the inferior forms 
are but the by-product turned to use in the economy 
of nature. 

Scientists tell us that the developing embryo re- 
peats in its evolving life of a few months the whole 
series of changes that have figured in the organic 
world from the beginning. At first a single-celled 
organism, then a fish with gills, then a batracian, 
then a mammal, then a man. The whole drama of 
philogeny is enacted in miniature, and nature re- 
capitulates her develoments to date in the embryonic 
life of each individual. It is as if the Creator in 
the beginning worked with the simplest forms, and 
gradually pushed out new brain lobes for increased 
intelligence, and better mechanical contrivances in 
the anatomy with each succeeding epoch of time, 
keeping always the story of His work to date in 
evidence and manifesting it anew in each individual 
life. 

The different superimposed formations of the 
246 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

earth's crust show a sucession of organic forms, both 
vegetable and animal, which have been gradually 
evolving from elementary types to the more com- 
plex and more highly organized species which cul- 
minate in the present epoch, but which will no doubt 
be subject to the same variations in the future as in 
the past. 

Thus we behold that a great plan is in progress. 
The whole universe is laid under tribute to these 
passing forms of life. They are the one thing for 
which all other things are created. Force and matter 
are immutable in their action and counteraction. Life 
only is the changeable thing. Can we imagine such 
a great interdependent scheme, involving as it does 
the whole cosmic process, being the blind work of 
chance ? In every aspect of it there is the indication 
of an intelligent, purposeful force back of it. 

The materialist is driven to a sorry plight when he 
asserts that the vital processes are but the manifesta- 
tion of chemical reaction. He has learned a few of 
the very elementary chemical laws, and has seen 
glimpses of the wonderful phenomena of physiology, 
but the great occult processes of chemistry and 
physiology will forever baffle his efforts. The 
miracle that goes on within the fragile shell of an 
egg transcends all human understanding. The mind 
247 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

of man stands hopeless before the puzzle. The few 
facts which go to make up the science of chemistry 
and the fewer which go to make up the science of 
physiology are like the fossil shells we pick up on 
the seashore, but the great abyss from whence they 
came will forever conceal its great generalizations 
under fathomless depths. And yet men will pre- 
sume with these few elementary facts in their hands 
to say that chemism is life and that life is chemism. 

Millions of years ago the Creator foresaw that 
man would come; and that he would require heat 
and light and mechanical force greater than the or- 
dinary processes of nature could furnish, and the 
sunbeams that fell wasting on the face of that 
primeval world were trapped by the coal fern, and 
stored away as the force that held the molecules of 
fixed carbon in the coal seams of the earth. There 
was no use for this stored energy for untold millions 
of years during which the seashores were submerged 
and buried and then elevated into the mountain 
heights. Then man made his advent and began to 
wrest his birthright from the crude face of nature. 
Who of sane mind shall call this the work of blind 
force ? Much more is the God-power necessary with 
this conception of things, than with the empirical 
world of special providences. The individual may 

248 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

well be left to his own shift in such a stupendous 
plan. 

And whither is it leading us, and whence came 
it out of the chaos of the past? Time had no be- 
ginning and will have no end. Has all the eternity 
of the past been wasted, and is this the first re- 
hearsal of the great drama of life? Or are we not 
in an eternal process as myriads before have been, 
and as myriads to come are yet to be ? Is there not 
some grand climacteric act, some final product in 
which the work of God shall be consummated ? We 
have evolved so far, and learned to appropriate so 
much of the omniscience and omnipotence of God. 
Why should we stop now before we have reached 
the final goal? 

If I should assert something I cannot prove I 
would be open to the charge of speculating. Yet 
why should I not speculate on the meaning of the 
great cosmic process if I desire to do so? Am I 
doing any more than the man who propounds the 
nebular hypothesis, or the man who divides matter 
into molecules and atoms. The basis of all our 
knowledge of cosmic phenomena is hypothesis, 
which may one day prove to be incorrect. The 
scientific world will permit me to indulge with im- 
punity in speculation so long as I do not transcend 
249 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

certain materialistic boundary lines which have been 
mapped out. Of matter and force I may speculate 
with propriety, but when I bring a third element into 
my conjecture, and project a hypothesis with spirit 
as the central figure, I am treading on dangerous 
ground, and need beware that I am unbuckling my 
armor and exposing myself to the shafts of ridicule. 
If I write in the potential mood I shall escape the 
burden of proving what I say, and my guess may be 
as near the mark as any other's. 

From comparative anatomy, from embryology, 
and from paleontology the evolution theory seems 
to substantiate well its claims as an explanation of 
the genesis of the organic world. If it be true that 
there has been an evolution of physical forms in an 
ever ascending scale, with man as the final product 
to date, why not an evolution of spiritual entities to 
correspond? In all the ages that are past this 
physical being of mine was mingled in chaos with 
the world of matter. The calcium and the iron and 
the phosphorous of which it is composed were a part 
of the great unorganized aggregate of these sub- 
stances. But there came a time when it was my 
happy lot to be differentiated and selected from 
chaos to become an individual. By a mysterious 
biological process which I cannot understand this 

250 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

selection was made, and I who before was chaos am 
now a living, breathing individual form. This is 
manifestly and evidently true of the physical man. 

But what about the spiritual complement of man ? 
Where in all the ages past has been the spiritual 
entity that inhabits this body and manifests its 
mental processes and emotions through it? Some- 
where, organized and selected or unorganized and 
chaotic, it has existed for all time. Does it not seem 
reasonable that the individualizing process has been 
true of the spiritual ego as well as of the physical ego ? 
From the aggregate of unorganized spirit an indi- 
vidual was separated henceforth to exist as an inde- 
pendent life, to assume responsibilities of its own, 
and to move amid the marvels of the universe. And 
if there has been an evolution of physical forms, why 
not a corresponding evolution of spiritual entities in 
the same ascending scale? 

I think there is at least the essence of plausibility 
in such a theory, and we may assume that it ex- 
plains the cosmic process as we see it past and pres- 
ent in the various phases of its evolution. We may 
well ask ourselves, What about the future ? where is 
this stupendous process of organization leading to? 
and what is its outcome to be ? 

There is a vague suggestion that harks back to the 
251 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

dawn of the history of man and runs through the 
various phases of human conjecture from the be- 
ginning, that what God is man may become. The 
ancient Greeks and Romans deified their rulers, the 
mediaeval enthusiast deified his saints, and peopled 
the empyrean with celestialized personages to whom 
he directed his worship. The greatest, most satisfy- 
ing thought that religion ever gave to the world is 
this very one : "What God is man may become." 
We each have the potentialities of God within us 
in an undeveloped state. The purpose of all our ex- 
periences is to develop the God-faculties we possess 
and enable us to approximate ever nearer the om- 
niscience of Deity. Experience is the only thing that 
develops intellect, and intellect in perfection is the 
only thing that distinguishes God from inferior 
beings. 

If I am not to retain this individuality in the fu- 
ture, why has God made this gigantic effort from the 
beginning of time to differentiate me from chaos? 
To each of us the most vital and important of all 
things is life — individual, self-conscious life. The 
universe is nothing toi me unless I can live. Is God 
going to be so inconsistent with himself as to destroy 
and take away that for which the universe has put 
forth such effort? Is he going to repeal the law of 
252 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

life which He permitted to be written in the code of 
Creation? Will the Creator wanton with us, and 
build beautiful forms as the child builds block houses 
simply for the pleasure of knocking them to pieces 
again? Or is there not something real and earnest 
and tangible in this world of ours ? 

Are you then antropomorphist? Yes. Are 
you polytheist ? Yes. I am anything and everything 
that sees perfecton in the plan of God and Divinity 
in the possibilities of man. Do you hold the old con- 
ception of the great man God with flaming eyes and 
smoking nostrils? No. What then is your concep- 
tion of Deity? My conception of God, in part, is 
the great indwelling life principle of this world, 
which manifests itself in the undeviating laws of na- 
ture. What relationship then does this hold to the 
perfected man who is said to be in the image of God ? 
When man becomes perfected he will be entirely in 
unison with God, and being governed by the constant 
laws of the universe, he will be but an individualized 
unit of the universal. When a solution of sodium 
chloride is permitted to remain at rest, it precipitates 
from its substance beautiful crystals, which have all 
the physical and chemical properties of the mother 
solution. They are simply individualized parts of 
the whole, obeying all, the chemical laws, and fulfil- 
253 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS • 

ling all the physical conditions of the amorphous 
solution that produced them. 

It may be that we bear to the great universal life 
some such relationship as this : We move and breathe 
in the midst of the menstruum that has precipitated 
vs. Our specialize intelligence is a unit of the univer- 
sal mind. We vibrate with the emotions of the great 
Over Soul. As Emerson says, we are the rivulets 
that manifest the pulsations of the great surging 
sea of life. Struggling and contending as we are 
for position and individual advantage, with a mind 
and will that appear to be wholly our own, there is 
an undertow that moves us unconsciously. Let 
each man look over the experiences of his life and 
see if there were not times when the plane of the 
gieat universal mind intersected with the plane of 
his individual mind, and somehow, somewhere he 
could realize that destiny was leading him, that God 
was directing him. 

These are the moments of the fine abandon 
of the poet when he cuts adrift from conven- 
tional thought and sails on the sea of emotion. 
These are the times of the ultimatum of the 
patriot when he says, "Give me liberty or give 
me death." These are the times when we choose 
each of us unconsciously a way unfrequented by 
254 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

others, unexplored except by the great universal 
mind which directs us toward some unknown goal 
where we find peace and satisfaction. 

It may be that we bear to the great universal life 
some such relationship as the single cells in the ani- 
mal organism bear to the whole complex structure. 
One particular cell secretes bile and stores glycogen. 
It seems to exist for no other purpose. And yet it has 
a life-history which is uniform and complete in all 
cells of its kind. The brain cell, with its prolonga- 
tions, receives and transmits the impulses of the 
soul within, and is mechanically adapted for that 
very thing. And yet each cell of nervous tissue is 
a vital entity; the method of its birth, the method 
of absorbing its nutriment and getting rid of its 
excrement and the method of its dissolution are all 
fixed. It seems to have a life history of its own, 
quite apart from its relationship to the greater life 
of the animal to which it belongs. It seems not 
improbable that we, in fulfilling the functions of our 
individual life, are fulfilling also the functions of 
the great universal life. 

There is much satisfaction to my mind in these 
hypothetical thoughts. I am not the mere accidental 
product of some ungoverned power, which pro- 
duces life and leaves the vitalized clay to the caprice 
255 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

of other ungoverned forces to deal with wantonly 
and wastefully I am holding down this outpost 
of God's universe. I am a sentinel entrusted with 
a duty, which it is wisdom for my own sake that I 
fulfill, for when I fail of my duty to the universal 
life, I detract from the advantages of my individual 
life. 

The human body as a machine is well-nigh per- 
fect. The defects that appear in our anatomy and 
physiology and that make demand for the service 
of the physician and the surgeon are altogether ac- 
cidental. They are variations from the dominant 
type. Perfect physiology resulting from perfect 
anatomy is the heritage of each of us. 

If the advocate of materialism and chance crea- 
tion will but turn his attention dispassionately to the 
human body as a mechanical contrivance, he will see 
unmistakable evidences of an adaptation of means 
to ends that could have resulted only from intelligent 
forethought. 

One of the difficulties which the early makers of 
microscopes came up against was chromatic aberra- 
tion. When light was brought to a focus, a halo of 
rainbow colors played about the object in the field 
and obscured vision. A study of the human eye 
revealed the fact that the different refracting media 
256 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

are composed of lenses of different degrees of hard- 
ness, and when microscopes were fashioned after it 
by having their lenses made of different qualities 
of glass in alternation, the difficulty of chromatic 
aberration disappeared entirely. 

We must agree, I think, that the great organizing 
intelligence which stands back of the organic world 
was cognizant not only of the ordinary laws of 
optics, but of the very defects in those laws which 
needed special arrangements for their correction. 
Can we imagine this to be the work of chance? The 
human ear has a mechanical contrivance of small 
articulated bones and a delicate vibrating membrane 
connected with the organ of Corti, which is like the 
keyboard of a piano, tuned to all degrees of pitch 
and timber and connected by means of the auditory 
nerve with the cortex of the brain above, where the 
sound waves are interpreted as uttered words, or as 
musical notes or other significant sounds, and stored 
away for future reference. Could we with the great- 
est stretch of our imagination look upon this most 
wonderful of all auditory contrivances, the human 
ear, as the work of chance ? 

When an artery is severed, one would naturally 
expect the district to which it was distributed to die 
for lack of nutriment. But a study of anatomy 
257 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

reveals the fact that small collateral arteries con- 
nect up every segment of the larger arteries with 
the segments above and below it, so that the circula- 
tion is carried on right past the break as if nothing 
had happened. The blood itself carries in solution 
a substance which causes it to coagulate into clots 
whenever it gets outside of the unbroken intima of 
the vessels which contain it. 

Whenever an artery is severed by accident or 
design the inner coats; of it have a property of con- 
tracting and drawing themselves into the open lumen 
where they act as a plug to stop the hemorrhage. 
Thus we see that in the circulation of the blood not 
only the ordinary events of that mysterious process 
have been provided for, but the very accidents to 
which each individual in his life's experience must be 
subjected, have been forestalled and the means of 
escape provided. 

Many years ago my attention was directed to the 
healing of wounds. I asked myself how it was that 
some wounds heal quickly, while others are slow 
and indefinite in their time of resolution. Take, for 
example, the so-called condition of proud flesh or 
exuberant ulcer. The old text-book explanation 
of this common phenomenon is that the circulation is 
poor and that the anatomical part does not receive 
258 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

enough nutriment. That this is an incorrect conclu- 
sion is easily proved by the fact that such an ulcer 
bleeds profusely at the least touch. There is abun- 
dance of blood, and the tissue cells are produced 
in such profusion that they fill the wound with 
granulations which rise above the level of the adja- 
cent skin. Why, then, does the ulcer not heal? If 
we were going to repair .a breach in the wall, bricks 
and mortar would be necessary, but an intelligent 
use of the materials would be imperative. If we 
simply dumped them down in the gap and went our 
way, conditions would be no better than before. 
But when the intelligent mason lays the brick up in 
order and adjusts the cement between them, the re- 
pair may be so perfect that one could hardly dis- 
tinguish the difference between it and the normal 
wall. 

Just so in the healing of wounds and ulcers. Not 
only are cells and blood necessary, but an intelligent 
direction of the process of repair, so that nerve shall 
unite with nerve and muscle with muscle, etc. 

Unconsciously to us there exists in the body a 
monitor of repair, which has the function of preserv- 
ing the body in perfect symmetry and physiological 
exactness. Hypothetically we can locate this regu- 
lator and director of the healing process in a center 
259 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

of the cortex of the brain. Just as a certain district 
of this marvelous gray surface layer is set apart to 
regulate the circulation, and another to regulate the 
breathing function, we can imagine that another 
district is set apart to control the healing process. 
But back of the hypothetical material center we must 
imagine the soul, which, when it enters the body, 
must carry with it the plan and specifications of its 
earthly tabernacle all drawn up and chartered. The 
framework, the coverings and adornments, and the 
internal mechanism of life are all adjusted to each 
other with finest precision. To maintain for the 
specified time of three score and ten years, more or 
less, this perfect equilibrium and symmetry of parts, 
is an obligation accepted from the Creator as a 
sacred duty. 

The working of this soul-function becomes very 
apparent under certain conditions. When an injury 
from within or from without perforates stomach or 
intenstine, escape of the contained fluid, laden as it 
is with bacteria, would mean speedy development 
of peritonitis and death. But observe the intelligent 
manner in which this emergency is met by the 
physiologcal processes. Immediately the rectus 
muscle becomes rigid as a board to hold everything 
perfectly still, because the motion of breathing 
260 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

would spread the poisonous fluid. The great omen- 
tum throws its protecting arms round about and ad- 
justs itself with precision on all sides of the breach 
to hold the diseased process within as small a 
compass as possible; the peritoneum throws out 
plastic lymph to glue together adjacent surfaces, 
and prevent the spread of the gravitating fluid. The 
blood responds with a great increase O'f its white 
corpuscles, which are the defensive warriors of the 
body, and these are forwarded with great speed to 
the scene of conflict. Immediately the patient begins 
to unload the stomach by vomiting profusely. 

One of the physiological puzzles which was most 
difficult for me to understand in my student days 
was this very thing. Why should patients with 
acute abdominal diseases invariably vomit. The 
explanation which finally came to my mind was this : 
When the miller discovers that one of the wheels of 
his machinery is broken he goes straight away to the 
head of the mill-race and turns off the steam, be- 
cause he knows that the force it represents will do 
great damage if it continues to turn the disabled 
machinery. And so in our physiological processes. 
The food content of the stomach and intestines 
would do irreparable injury if it were propelled on- 
ward into the damaged segments, and so nature pre- 
261 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

vents that by invoking the aid of the emetic center 
and unloading the stomach of its contained food. 

Thus we see in the hour of peril a co-ordination 
of defensve forces which can have but one explana- 
tion. The soul in the body, like the captain at sea, 
meets the emergencies of its mortal career with 
expedients born of highest intelligence and executed 
with vigorous promptitude. 

The credulity of the mind which can accept the 
theory that this incomprehensible human machine is 
the aggregation of a series of chance circumstances 
perpetuating only such individuals as happened to 
be endowed by accident with some variation from 
the dominant type of his race, and eliminating all 
others which failed to receive this chance endowment 
and which admits of no intelligent adaptation of 
means to ends in the explanation of this most myster- 
ious of all the phenomena of nature, is to my mind 
comparable with the one who accepts witchcraft 
and transubstantiation on authority and makes no 
inquiry about the intrinsic evidence for or against 
them. 

Proving things from authority and the method 
of making all deductions conform to certain precon- 
ceived ideas has by no means been limited to the 
religious world. In Von Haekel's great book, "The 
262 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

Riddle of the Universe," after a masterly presenta- 
tion of all those correlated facts oi comparative anat- 
omy, embryology, and paleontology which lead up to 
the evolution theory, this great apostle of materialism 
says, "When we follow this process backward from 
the man to the moneron and deal with its genesis, 
we must admit that it has its beginning in spontan- 
eous generation of life, because to admit any other 
explanation would be to admit a miracle." 

Von Haekel was well aware of the fact that this 
matter of the spontaneous generation of life has been 
a perennial problem among scientific men from 
ancient times and that whenever it came up for the 
crucial test in scientific bodies the evidence adduced 
has been overwhelmingly against it. The fact that 
maggots develop in decomposing meat was at one 
time taken as positive evidence of the spontaneous 
generation of life. But when Lowenhock proved by 
screening the meat that the maggot was simply the 
larval form o'f the fly, which was hatched out of the 
eggs previously deposited by that ubiquitous insect, 
the apostles of spontaneous generation went down 
in defeat. Then when Henle and Polender and 
Devaine discovered the world of bacteria and an- 
nounced the mysteries that were revealed by the 
microscope, the idea was again revived that life came 
263 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

spontaneously from matter. The advocates of this 
theory asserted themselves with great emphasis. They 
said they had been mistaken only in the size of the 
unit. If you expose to the open air a vessel contain- 
ing broth or any infusion of organic material, in a 
few hours millions of bacteria will be swarming in it. 
This was to them positive proof that bacteria had 
their origin in dead matter. But when the master 
mind of Pasteur attacked the problem, he proved be- 
yond all doubt that bacterial organisms are subject 
to the same law as all other organisms, and can origi- 
nate only from others of their own kind. The con- 
stancy of the law of biogenesis has made possible 
modern surgical technique and modern conceptions 
of sanitation. 

And so the doctrine of spontaneous generation of 
life went down before the masterly work of Pasteur 
to a defeat from which it has never rallied. Whether 
its advocates will find some new frame-work for 
their theory or not is a matter which only the future 
can determine. But it is certain that all the evidence 
brought forward to date has met with a rebuttal 
which seems decisive, and spontaneous generation of 
life rests now only on the basis of sheer conjecture. 

With all this data before him, Von Haekel makes 
the positive statement that life originated from dead 
264 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

matter. In taking this position, as he says, to avoid 
accepting a miracle it seems to me he has to admit 
the greatest miracle one could well imagine. Laz- 
arus coming forth from the tomb is but an ordinary 
incident compared with the wholesale animation of 
dead matter, accepted as a fact by this great sceptic. 
He is so true to his preconceived idea of monism that 
he is willing to bend heaven and earth for evidence 
to prop it up. If there is any difference between this 
type of mind and that of the religious fanatic, I fail 
to comprehend it. They are of the same breed, and 
the manifestation of their perverted mentality differs 
only as a result of the wrong tangent each has got 
started on. 

Has the human machine in its mechanism a means 
of communication with God? 

This is the pertinent question that comes down to 
us from every epoch of the history of man. Let us 
set aside all traditional thoughts and methods, and 
examine the matter from the purely rational stand- 
point. 

Physiologists are all agreed that the origin of ail 
the impulses of life is in the pyramidal cells which go 
to make up the gray rind of the brain. All our life 
processes seem to proceed from this incomprehensi- 
ble thin stratum which covers the hemispheres of the 
265 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

brain. Do all the impulses which these brain cells 
send out come from within, or do they not receive 
and transmit impulses from an extraneous source ? 

The sending station of a wireless telegraphy sys- 
tem has antennae which go high in the air. When 
the apparatus is in operation the antennae give off 
Hurtzian waves which radiate in every direction. 
They palpitate upon the intangible ether, and pass 
over mountains and valleys and oceans in their on- 
ward migration. They have no message to deliver to 
any object encountered by the way, until they come 
to another station which is tuned to vibrate in unison 
with them, a hundred or a thousand miles away. As 
soon as they impinge upon an apparatus which has 
been constructed to take up the amplitude of their 
vibration, they deliver up the intelligent message 
which they convey. The mountain and the valley and 
the ocean over which they have traversed received 
no intimation of the swift speeding message, because 
they could not take up the amplitude of its vibration. 
To them it appeared as if nothing had happened, 
though the cypher dispatch bore record of the fall of 
an empire or the discovery of a new world. 

The part of the human machine we call the cortex 
of the brain is not only a sending but a receiving 
station for mental impulses. Electricity is but one 
266 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

phase of the great universal force which manifests 
like properties in all its mutations. It is the red 
ray of the sunbeam that vibrates from the rose, while 
all the more rapid vibrations pass idly by its gorgeous 
petals. The Aeolian harp takes music from the 
breeze by its power of selecting its affinity of vibra- 
tion from the commingled melody. 

Just so in the world of psychology. From the 
great central mind of the universe emanates intel- 
ligence which permeates all space. In the midst of 
this inundation each organic form is hung like the 
aeolian harp to select its affinity and manifest to 
the world such of the great universal mind as it can 
focus. I am aware in a way of the omniscience 
of God, but I am capable of manifesting only a part 
of His knowledge. I am a poorly constructed harp. 
But there are some chords in me that vibrate true, 
and of this much o'f the will of God I am an inter- 
preter to my fellow men. 

There is no creature so mean in all this great uni- 
verse but has something of the Divine message to re- 
veal. The most beautiful of all the organic forms I 
have ever seen is the jelly fish of the Californian seas, 
which is not much more intelligent than the slime of 
the ocean of which it is constructed. Not a glimmer 
of mentality does it manifest as it sways with the 
267 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

restless waves ; and yet it has a message of symmetry 
and blended colors which no artist could approxi- 
mate. 

The instincts of animals are but their manifesta- 
tion of the great universal mind which finds in their 
brain cells a means of making itself known to the 
world. The duckling which is hatched in the hen's 
nest knows from the first that it is an aquatic animal, 
and rushes to the water at the first opportunity. 
The rodent tribe are aware of the succession of the 
seasons and lay up in summer their winter's supply. 
Among the ants and the birds and the bees we per- 
ceive a purposeful method of life which seems often 
to be directed by the highest intelligence. All this 
we may designate the universal revelation of God to 
His creatures, before which we all stand equal ac- 
cording to our several ability. 

I am moving in the same flood of light as the crab 
which goes sidewise and the serpent that crawls on 
the earth. They draw from the same source as I 
such intelligence as they can manifest in their sim- 
ple life functions. They are, as I, the rivulets that 
throb before the surging sea of life. And if they 
receive less of the Divine energy than I, it is be- 
cause their organization can appropriate less of the 
passing impulses. 

268 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

The different degrees of intelligence among men 
have a physical basis. The Great Spirit manifests 
itself through brain cells, and the higher the organ- 
ization the nearer we come to absolute knowledge. 

The world's history shows that many of the great 
discoveries have been announced by two or more 
individuals almost simultaneously, though they were 
not associated in any way in their research, nor 
acquainted with each other's work. What does this 
mean ? The Great Over Soul possesses all knowledge 
of all things, and is ever ready to reveal any part of 
that knowledge to whosoever prepares himself to 
receive it. As soon as these brain cells of ours are 
trained to vibrate in unison with any part of the great 
universal mind, we shall receive the message we 
are prepared to receive. When two or more individ- 
uals, by a process of mental training or of special 
endowment, are prepared to receive a special mes- 
sage, they will see the light, while the multitude will 
be oblivious of its presence. And this to my mind 
is the basis of what we call revelation, so far as it 
concerns the average man. 

That there are physical types, one higher than the 

other in the great organic scale we admit without 

question. That there are individuals of the same 

type especially endowed must be apparent to all at 

269 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

a glance. The terms prophet, poet, philosopher are 
our abstract expressions of this preference of nature 
for some of her sons. It must needs be that we have 
oracles to express to us the mandates of the Divine 
mind, in order that we ourselves may learn to proph- 
esy and draw ever nearer to the omniscience of God. 
I am bathed in, I am inundated by the great univer- 
sal flood of intelligence ; but it may be still and mo- 
tionless around me, until some curent is started by 
the bark of another as it passes me by. We wait as 
the mariners of old for the moving of the winds that 
we ourselves may spread our sails and begin the on- 
ward migration. To the one who stirs the pool of 
Bethesda we give all honor, and we hesitate not to 
rush into the vortex he has created. 

I am a humble plodder, proud only of the one 
desire to move onward and upward. I am willing 
to bow my head and do obeisance when the prophets 
come, be they scientific, aesthetic, or religious. I 
have exulted in the achievements of science, I have 
wept in the presence of great pictures, I have wor- 
shiped at the shrine of Christ. I go through the 
world with skylight and sidelights open, eager to 
appropriate every ray of light that comes to me from 
God above and the sons of God around me. 

It is my humble hope that by learning thoroughly 
270 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

the way of subordination I shall develop by degrees 
the power to co-ordinate with the great creative 
energy of the universe. If I develop my talents I 
shall not be merely passive in the cosmic drama, but 
shall become an active, constructive force helping 
onward the program of progression to the extent of 
my ability. To my mind in this matter of mental 
rapport there is a full explanation of the appearance 
of those peculiar individuals who have come among 
us at various times and places in the world's his- 
tory, and established new systems of religion or 
breathed the breath of life into the old ones by the 
boldness of their assertions and the earnestness of 
their protest against conventional thought. 

They are the voice from the wilderness which 
cries repentance to each succeeding generation. They 
are the minds which by special endowment are 
developed along the lines of spiritual discernment. 
Jesus of Nazareth, the most wonderful among the 
children of men, was the highest type of this class 
of individual. His spiritual philosophy stands in a 
class by itself compared with that of all other phil- 
osophers and teachers. His sermon on the Mount 
embraces the principles of the veritable kingdom of 
God. Impractical as many of them are considered 
in our existing social systems, and with mankind as 
271 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

they are at the present time, they penetrate the veil of 
the empyrian, and establish the rule of God in His 
kingdom. Surely they were the product of a brain 
in tune with the infinite ! 

What shall I say of the canonical miracles with 
which Jesus is accredited? Is there any ground for 
reconciling them with our ideas of the fixed laws 
of the universe? 

My first observation is that the records of them 
may not be exact. Evidently the story of Jesus was 
held for some considerable time as oral tradition and 
subjected to the modifications which must creep into 
many told tales. Four different evangelists wrote 
the history of Jesus. While they agree in general 
upon the basic facts, there are enough variations in 
the different narratives to indicate that they all drew 
from a source that was subject to modification. The 
story of blind Bartimeus, the story of Peter's de- 
nial, and the story of the fate of Judas are all a 
little different. How often do we observe in the 
relation of the same contemporary events by differ- 
ent individuals similar discrepancies ! 

Our oldest biblical manuscripts do not approach 

the Christian era within several generations of men. 

How do we know that the ancient transcriptions and 

the modern translations are correct? No doubt 

272 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

they have been imperfect in their execution al- 
though safeguarded by all the methods of pains- 
taking scholars. Interpolations have crept into the 
text; idioms have been robbed of their meaning, 
thoughts have gone into the new language in a 
modified form. Quite possibly some things recorded 
as miracles have been exaggerated by repetition. 

With these sources of error we can see that it is 
absurd to hold to the literal phraseology of the 
scripture as the exact word of Deity. Its inspira- 
tion is in the spirit of the men who wrote it and not 
in the dead letter which has come down to us 
through all the generations of men who have given 
it their bias and handed it onward. 

Is there anything in the experiences of the pres- 
ent generation of men that would make probable 
the miracles of healing attributed to Jesus? I 
answer with emphasis, Yes ! Again I go to the 
human machine for an explanation of psychological 
and physiological phenomena that have in different 
times and places been regarded as miracles. And in- 
deed if we define a miracle as an event contrary to 
the traditional ideas of things, or an event which 
transcends our understanding, they were and are 
miracles. 

In the human body there is one set of nerves 
273 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

both motor and sensory which come down through 
the spinal cord from the brain to be distributed to 
voluntary muscles and integument and bones and 
ligaments, etc., all of which are under the dominion 
of the conscious mind and subject to a greater or 
less degree to volitional control from above. Then 
there is another set of nerves called the sympa- 
thetic which are distributed to the involuntary 
muscles of the blood vessels, and the stomach and 
intestine, and all other structures whose function is 
not under the control of the will nor actuated by 
the conscious mind. 

This sympathetic system connects up with the 
sub-conscious part of the brain where centres have 
been established to control the distribution of blood, 
the peristalsis of bowel, and all those nutritional 
processes which can be performed automatically. If 
we had to think every time the heart is to beat, or 
every time the lungs are to be inflated, we should use 
up all our mental energy in the processes of our own 
physiology, and life would be to no purpose. Na- 
ture has wisely removed the regulation of these 
vegetative functions from the domain of the con- 
scious mind that we might without impediment pur- 
sue thoughts which have no bearing on the processes 
of our own body. The higher ideation of intelligent 
274 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

beings would be impossible without this mechanism 
which keeps most of our physiological processes sub- 
merged beneath the level of volitional cerebration. 

The peculiar thing about this sub-conscious strat- 
um of mind is that it is amenable to suggestion both 
from within and from without. The degree of sus- 
ceptibility varies greatly in different individuals, but 
doubtless, all people are subject to it in some de- 
gree. No doubt, as has been already suggested, 
there is in this subconscious mind a center that 
governs the repair of tissues and supervises the lay- 
ing down of cells for that purpose. We can imagine 
that the ordinary process of repair could be greatly 
accelerated by a powerful mental suggestion, just 
as the contractor who is building you a house could 
respond to a rush order by multiplying his forces 
and putting through a three month's job in three 
weeks. Miraculous healing, from whatever view- 
point we can imagine it, must be an acceleration of 
the ordinary slow processes of repair. 

The human body can heal itself of almost all ail- 
ments if we give it time and the proper conditions 
of environment. A healing power is one of our 
natural endowments. It is subject to modification 
by suggestions from within and from without. The 
principle involved has been the corner stone of some 
275 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

religious creeds, and has written itself into the con- 
fession of many others. 

It seems not a sacrilege to me to think that Jesus, 
in His God-like compassion for the affliction of his 
neighbors and friends, should have invoked a natural 
law to heal them, though it must have seemed a 
supernatural manifestation to all those who saw the 
results of his magic power and did not comprehend 
the source of it. 

Why should we insist that the actions and ut- 
terances of prophets should deal with things dif- 
ferent from the laws of the universe? Is not God 
the author of natural law? Some people think the 
dominion of God ends where natural law begins. 
They forget the miracle of the blade of grass and 
of the blushing rose. The most stupendous of all 
miracles, the beginning of life, they regard as only 
a natural event. If the transcendency of all compre- 
hension be defined as a miracle, surely this is one 
great enough to satisfy the definition. We are 
demanding miracles to prop up our faith in God 
when all around us they are falling thick and fast. 

I am teleologist to the core. I see the province 

of God in every manifestation of life ; in every 

contrivance of nature for the perpetuation of life. 

Jesus: was a great healer because he had the part of 

276 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

His brain which comprehends the healing power 
well developed, and could interpret perfectly this 
part of the great universal intelligence. He was an 
exponent of the principles of the kingdom of God 
because he had become completely in tune with the 
infinite. 

As to his supermundane genesis I shall not dispute 
it, considering how far he transcended all other hu- 
man beings. We are justified in the belief that 
nature made some great exception in his behalf, 
considering what he was and what he did, though 
I do not believe that he had the God attributes dif- 
ferent in kind, but only in degree, from the rest of 
us. We are all the sons of God and have within us 
all the attributes of Deity in embryo. 

From my childhood I have read and reread the 
narrative of the administration and the superlative 
doctrines of Jesus of Nazareth. The simple direct 
story bears the evidence of truth in its very sim- 
plicity. I accept it as essentially correct, though the 
explanation of it from the modern viewpoint must 
differ a little from the explanation given by his con- 
temporaries. Considering that the records we have 
were produced by men with fallible human judg- 
ment, v/e cannot imagine that we have a full and 
perfect record of all he did and said. Each narrator 
277 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

must of necessity have injected something of his 
own personality into the story, and interpreted the 
apparent supermundane occurrences according to his 
individual bias and according to the prevailing idea 
of things in that particular age. I accept the actual 
facts related by each of them and put my own con- 
struction on their meaning. 

I assert again the absolute right of each individual 
to freedom of thought in these vital matters. It 
seems to me that the man who dares not weigh and 
analyze is the man who lacks faith. He is afraid 
to trust God for fear that something in the mechan- 
ism of the universe will conflict with his fond tradi- 
tion. He is willing to make God inconsistent with 
himself that he might cling to the conception that 
was started thousands of years ago by men of like 
passions and like imperfections with himself. Re- 
ligion to my mind is a progressive thing, just as 
science is progressive. It is preposterous to think 
that our knowledge of all other things should ex- 
pand and progress, but that our knowledge of Deity 
should remain stationary. 

The idea of the immaculate conception is not 

miraculous to me in the face of what modern science 

has revealed about generation. That the ordinary 

processes of nature can be modified, and their con- 

278 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

ditions changed is the observation of every worker 
in biology and every breeder of animals. Jesus was 
our elder brother because he was a human being 
with body and parts like the rest of us. He trans- 
cended all things human in his spirituality because 
his brain by natural endowment was attuned to 
vibrate in unison with a far greater part of the 
infinite mind. And this is the particular wherein the 
men we call prophets differ from ordinary people. 
By special endowment they are attuned to a greater 
part of that particular phase of the infinite mind 
which we designate spirituality, and the (special 
service they have rendered to the world is to reveal 
the things which are spiritual. 

In delivering their spiritual message they have 
sometimes got tangled in the phraseology of it some 
of the prevailing ideas of cosmic philosophy of the 
age in which they lived. This was purely accidental. 
They delivered their message in the written form, 
sometimes adorned with imagery which was purely 
metaphorical to them. But the extreme orthodox 
interpreter of the ages to follow took that message as 
the word of Deity verbatim and found himself in 
conflict with the prevailing ideas of the mechanism 
of the universe, because science had been going for- 
ward with colossal strides during all the centuries 
279 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

in which he insisted that religion should remain 
stationary. 

And herein lies the essence of the so-called conflict 
of religion and science. It has been a conflict over 
the interpretation of the processes of nature in which 
the crude conceptions of the less enlightened earlier 
ages have been placed in opposition to' the more en- 
lightened conceptions which have taken advantage 
of all the progress made by science in the in- 
terim, and the real essence of religion has been 
left entirely out of the controversy. Society in 
all ages has divided itself into two classes. One 
clings to the literal wording of old traditions the 
other accepts the new wine of truth and is willing to 
dispense with the old bottles of tradition. The mes- 
sage of the prophets should be taken for what it 
was intended to be, and meanings should not be 
read into it which were never meant by the author. 
Surely it is enough that they should enlighten us on 
spiritual matters, since science ignores all things 
spiritual. 

Good and evil are but the positive and negative 
phases of universal law. Righteousness is applied 
knowledge. Vice is applied ignorance. The moral 
law is as inexorable as the law of gravitation, and 
he who flies in the face of it will be punished here 
280 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

and now. Each clay is a day of judgment. I am 
the sum total of my actions to date. The degree of 
righteousness to which I attain is an indicator of the 
degree of perfection of my rapport with the great 
universal mind. If I sin, it is an indication that I am 
not entirely in tune with the infinite. I cannot be 
perfect because I am a poorly constructed machine. 
My mental bearings get out of adjustment some- 
times, and I would go forever wrong but for the 
power within me and the assistance I can get from 
my fellows to become readjusted. The fact that I 
can come again into harmony with the Infinite mind 
is a verification of the wisdom and righteousness of 
repentance. 

I assert myself in a new phase of transcendental- 
ism. The man who takes Milton's Paradise Lost as 
his model of pure English, and uses it to illustrate 
the perfection of our mother tongue, concerns him- 
self only with the structure of words and sentences 
and paragraphs and their relationship to one another, 
and he disregards entirely the subject matter of the 
world's greatest epic poem which is couched in these 
terms. The big thought back of Milton's perfect 
poem is not germane to the purpose of the man who 
only wishes to deal with his syntax. 

And so I find science and so I find dogmatic 
281 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

religion. They are dealing with the minutia of the 
processes of the universe and the stereotyped forms 
of God's revelations and forgetting the great corre- 
lating 1 purpose which stands back of all of them. I 
refuse to be held by your technicalities. I project my 
mind to the bounds of time and space and read the 
revelation of God first hand from the starry vault 
and the endless panorama of mundane processes. 

I know as well as I know anything that comes to 
me through my reasoning faculties that this life 
will not end with the dissolution of the body. That 
God has put forth such herculean effort to produce 
men for no other purpose than to live the few years 
of this mortal probation, is preposterous. The intel- 
lect, the soul of man, is too great and noble an 
achievement to be cast away. Just how the restitu- 
tion is to come we do not know. 

The greatest wonder to me is that there should 
be any death. In this human machine is inherent 
the marvelous power of regenerating all of its parts. 
For the score and more years of adult life before we 
reach the period of the senile changes, the different 
tissues of the body are perfectly regenerated, and 
kept up to full functional efficiency, and we ask our- 
selves why could not this process of self regenera- 
tion go on forever. The wonder is that all life is 

282 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

not eternal. If perfect regeneration of tissues 
is possible for twenty years, why is it not pos- 
sible for all time ! The mutations we call life 
and death are wonders beyond my comprehension, 
but I am sure they are vital parts in the great 
onward movement of souls. We stand on the brink 
of the chasm which is swallowing up all things 
human, and penetrate only with the eye of faith into 
the mysteries beyond. But the perfect adaptation of 
means to ends in all the processes of the universe 
should convince us that the sleep we call death is a 
needful thing in the great final regeneration just as 
the sleep which daily interrupts our consciousness 
is needful in the repair of our tissues. The human 
machine needs daily repairs, and at the end of the 
three score or more years of its conflict with sin 
and its struggle with the forces of nature it needs 
a great final overhauling and readjusting to prepare 
it 'for the next act in the drama. 

I know not the method of the final restitution, but 
I do seem to know that it will come. My faith is not 
based upon tradition alone, but upon the aggregate 
of all the phenomena that go to make up life and the 
adaptation of the universe to its perpetuation. But 
for the intelligence of man to comprehend it, the 
beauty and harmony of the universe would have no 

283 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

more significance than if they never had existed. 
Life is the one thing for which all other things 
are created. The philosophers say that force and 
matter are indestructible. The coal that glows in 
the grate and warms me while I pen these lines is 
giving off heat and light which it received millions 
of years ago when the sunbeams were falling over 
the jungles of the carboniferous age. These 
molecules of black carbon have held that same solar 
energy in latent potentiality while sea bottoms have 
been elevated into mountain ranges, and millions of 
generations of animal life have come and gone. 
When that energy is liberated, it is exactly the same 
in amount as it was when it went into that latent 
form. If it is converted by way of steam into 
mechanical energy, and this in turn converted into 
electricity, and the electricity reduced to light and 
heat again, after making allowance for loss by fric- 
tion, we shall find that we have exactly the same 
amount of heat and light we started with. Energy 
may change its form but it is never lost. The coal 
which has been reduced to ashes has simply changed 
its chemical form. The pure carbon has united with 
the oxygen of the air to form carbonic acid gas, 
while the calcium and other fixed elements have 
resolved themselves into cinders. 
284 



ON THE ANVIL OF THOUGHT 

I think we might, with the same propriety, draw 
the same conclusion of mental energy and its corol- 
lary life. We cannot it is true subject it to the 
same experiments and computations which we can 
heat and electricity. But the fact that it so far 
transcends all other forces that it is the regulator 
of them all is proof that it is elemental in its 
nature and perpetual in its duration. 

The changes we perceive in the universe are but 
readjustments. The component elements abide for- 
ever. Every turn of the kaleidoscope produces a 
new symmetrical picture, but the pieces of glass 
which produce them are always the same. 

It is not with the thought of discrediting tradi- 
tion that these observations have been elaborated. 
We must all acknowledge the great obligation we 
are under to those crystallize- 1 expressions of faith 
that come down to us 'from the ages in the name 
of scripture. They have kept alive the hope of 
immortality in the human heart through all the dark 
days when religion vacillated ind science doubted. 
I write to review the proposition of immortality 
from another tangent and shall be happy indeed 
if I have aided in the least degr^p to arouse inter- 
est in the one greatest of all qut;.tions, "If a man 
die shall he live again?" 

285 



CHAPTER XII 



RETROSPECTIVE 



IT is springtime again. The mantle of green has 
spread over the hillside and down the valley. 
The air is full of the fragrance of flowers, and the 
warblers have returned from the southland. All 
nature is attired in her richest robes. The sun is 
pouring its flood of golden glory, this time from the 
western sky. 

Twenty years and more have passed away since 
that fateful morning in the springtime before, when 
the group of children who were to figure in the 
annals of this little volume played the game of 
chance with the daisy's petals. Twenty years with 
all their changes have rolled over their heads. The 
play world became a world of stern facts. 

Into the drama of life some entered to play the 
role of tragedian, and some to play the role of 
clown, and some to play the role of hero. The 
kaleidoscope has turned and turned, and now we 
are to look at the final arrangement. 

The processes of nature have known but little 
286 



RETROSPECTIVE 

change. The song of the bird is unmodified; the 
blush of the peach blossom is neither brighter nor 
duller than it was twenty years ago. But when we 
look at the people who have witnessed this unchang- 
ing panorama of nature for twenty years, we are ap- 
palled to note the transformation which has been 
wrought into their countenance by the fast flying 
seasons. They were intoxicated then by the dreams 
of childhood, but they are sobered now by the stern 
facts of life. We are drifting, slowly drifting, to- 
ward the great abyss. We console ourselves with 
the thought that all mankind are subjected to the 
same process. The years swept over our heads with 
such rapidity that we gasp at the thought of them. 
We look at withered age, palsied and trembling, and 
wonder what particular form it will assume in our 
particular case when we arrive at the windrow and 
are ready to be gathered in. God pity the one who 
pins his faith and hope to the meagre events of 
these few fleeing years. , 

A little hut in the midst of a vacant field, far away 
from the thoroughfares of the town, still stands as 
the only indicator of the tragic story of Harriet and 
Henry. The rafters are tumbling in. The windows 
and the door have long since been demolished. 
Weeds have grown rank all about it and almost 
287 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

submerged its decaying walls. The birds for many 
years had built their nests under the protecting 
eaves, but now even they have forsaken it. The 
meanest creature of the field has disdained it as a 
home, and left it to the spell of desolation which 
time invokes upon all ephemeral products of the 
hand of man. 

One of the saddest chapters in life is that which 
records the dismantling of the old home which pro- 
tected the family circle we have each belonged to. 
Into a new vortex each one of us has been hurled, 
but we are bound to the old eddying center by a 
thousand sentiments which time can never dissever. 
The last stroke of dissolution of the family compact 
is the dismantling of the old home. 

In a quiet corner of the country church-yard a 
meagre little unpolished grave-stone marks the place 
where our one time winsome little Harriet sleeps 
the last long sleep and dreams amidst the scenes 
of her fitful career. Long ago the partner of her 
afflictions committed an offense against the laws 
of his country and became a refugee from justice. 
The numerous children who bore his dishonored 
name were left to make their way as best they could 
by the aid of kindred and kindly friends who came to 
the rescue. 

288 



RETROSPECTIVE 

But even the orphan nature has its compensa- 
tions. The hard struggle for position and place de- 
velops initiative, and often proves in the end to be 
an advantage instead of an encumbrance. To the 
credit of the children of this unfortunate home they 
each gave promise of becoming wholesome, inde- 
pendent citizens. And this is a full realization of 
our expectations in the average individual. 

In the potter's field in a city far away there is one 
grave unmarked, unkept, unfrequented. The very 
grass has refused to grow upon it, as though it were 
blighted with a curse. We cannot imagine the steril- 
ity of this particular spot of earth anything but acci- 
dental; the disintegrating clay of the culprit would 
have as much value as fertilizer and food for worms 
as the body of a saint, and that is the final lot of all 
of us so 'far as this earthly part of us is concerned. 
Our modern conception of insanity and crime and 
their relationship to the defective human machine, 
has changed completely the attitude of society to- 
ward the deceased criminal and the suicide. They 
are no longer buried at the cross-road nor otherwise 
marked for the scorn and derision of future genera- 
tions. We can look with pity at the last resting 
place of our poor unfortunate Jim and think of him 
as one of God's creatures who was cast in a defective 
289 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

mold, and manifested in his life and death the obli- 
quity which resulted therefrom. 

Of Samuel we need say nothing more than that 
he lives in the memory of all who knew him as one of 
the rarest, choicest personalities it has been their 
privilege to meet. The grassy mound which arches 
over his earthly remains has been wet with many 
a tear. The mother and helpless brothers and sisters 
have found friends in their hour of need, and the 
years have brought reconciliation for a condition 
that at one time seemed intolerable. When the 
gloom of death settles upon a household and the 
grave opens to recieve one from the family circle, 
it seems to the rest of them that life has lost all 
interest and that they can never know happiness or 
satisfaction again. But Time is the magician who 
plays with human emotions and changes them at 
will. When he waves His wand over the bowed 
head, it lifts itself erect again and in the new adjust- 
ment finds peace and consolation and even satisfac- 
tion in the memory which 'was at one time so painful. 

Of Joseph, the type of the pessimist, there is noth- 
ing more to be said. 

When a man becomes seasoned in the thought 
that he is the antithesis of all other men and that 
society is in conspiracy against him, there is not 
290 



RETROSPECTIVE 

much probability that he will ever change his mind. 
Obliquity of character in youth is not absolutely 
hopeless, because the reasoning of maturity may 
change the viewpoint. But when a man whose hair 
is turning gray gives himself over to vice and in- 
iquity, his case is pitiful because it is so hopeless. 

In a great city far away, there is a beautiful brown 
stone mansion, surrounded by gardens and lawns 
and beds of flowers, all laid out with the skill of an 
artist. We can pardon its tenant if there is some- 
thing of the suggestion of whim in the way he has 
tempered together rare exotics and evergreens and 
marble statues into a composite landscape, for 
genius claims the right to be whimsical if she pleases, 
and we must grant her poetic license which she 
adopts without asking questions. 

Our Richard married a lady of rare quality from 
one of the old colonial families, and many happy 
children came to grace their home. His studio is 
the eddying center of the best element of the art 
fraternity of his locality, and a wealthy patronage 
has poured treasure into his coffers to his heart's 
content. We cannot imagine any element of perfect 
happiness which fate has failed to bestow upon him. 

Standing at the meridian of life as he is, with all 
his fondest hopes perfectly realized, barring acci- 
291 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

dents, we can predict years of happiness yet to come. 
Plis life is surely a vindication of the law of compen- 
sation, ' which applies to all people, great and small. 

We will recall David to the stand and allow him 
to finish our case with a thanksgiving soliloquy 
which explains itself. The indulgent reader who 
has had the patience to follow these narratives has 
long ago learned that their purpose is not to exploit 
personality, but to get at some of the real problems 
of life in a tangible form for the admonition of 
youth and for the consolation of all those who have 
known the struggle of life and fought its battles, 
sometimes in faith and sometimes in doubt and un- 
certainty. The aim has been to look at life from 
many different angles, to point out the admonition of 
its nobler phases, and to hold up in the lime light its 
weak and unprofitable moods. 

Without cross question, then, or rebuttal we will 
let David have his final say and then submit our case 
tc the jury in the hope that they will be indulgent 
and judge charitably the faults and the failings of an 
inexperienced advocate who appears in court for the 
first time. 

"I am musing as I sit in the midst of the books 
which have accumulated around me through all the 
years since my childhood, after a thanksgiving din- 
292 



RETROSPECTIVE 

ner of ample proportions and appetizing quality, 
and relating to myself in a mental way the things 
for which I have to be thankful. 

"I place, first, my friends. They are the greatest 
asset to any life. Without them the other things in 
the world would not be worth having. The friend 
who can look with charity on ' our faults, and bear 
with patience our untoward moods ; who can weep 
with us when we weep, and exult with us in our 
hours of victory, is one 'of the greatest gifts of God. 
And we should be thankful for all such who have 
come by chance or choice into our circle. 

"As I ply the well worn keys of this writing 
machine, I am pestered with busy little hands which 
are anxious with the first opportunity to mar my 
orthography with misplaced letters or my syntax 
with words foreign to the text in which they appear. 
I see little blue eyes, bubbling over with mischief, 
and beaming with interest, and as I bear with pa- 
tience the pranks they are wont to play on me I say, 
'Thank God for these little sparks of the Divine fire 
which have come to illuminate my home!' 

"On the sofa by my side as I write is the one who 
has been with me through all the process of the de- 
velopment of this aggregation of material things and 
human fixtures in various degrees of growth which 
293 



AFTER TWENTY YEARS 

go to make up a home, who has kept the heterogene- 
ous mixture in precise adjustment and all the bear- 
ings lubricated, and who has withal shed over it all 
an influence of kindness and unselfish devotion, and 
intelligent adaptation of means to ends, and I say, 
'Thank God for her!' 

"I look over the varied stock of books which are 
upon the shelves before me, some fresh from the shop 
of the printer, and some begrimed with finger marks 
of childish hands, and spotted with tear-stains of 
early emotions which came to me away back in the 
morning of my life. And I say 'Thank God for these 
mute companions of my earliest years and of my 
days of maturity. From them I have received such 
thrills as only they can comprehend who have lived 
in the atmosphere of literature. 

"I recall the days of trial and the hours of tempta- 
tion which have beset my pathway, and think of the 
distress that one step to the right or to the left in 
critical moments might have brought into my life, 
and I thank God that I have been spared the humilia- 
tion of capitulating to weakness or to sin. 

"Success has not been without effort. The world is 
not built upon the plan of something for nothing. 
But I thank God for that original impulse which 
made the effort possible. 

294 



RETROSPECTIVE 

"I look out of my window and see white fleecy 
clouds projecting themselves against a background of 
beautiful blue, and I am stirred with the message 
they bring to my soul from over the abyss — of the 
aesthetic method of the great Artisan who made 
heaven and earth on plans of symmetry and form and 
color. I see the empty garden beds where beautiful 
flowers were wont to display their gorgeous colors 
in the summer sun, and I am thrilled with memories 
that come to me from all the years which have known 
the delight of summer flowers. I thank God not only 
for the beautiful things of the world but for that 
measure of aesthetic taste which enables me to re- 
ceive and appropriate their Divine message. 

"And so I am satisfied with life, and happy on this 
thanksgiving day that I have such a catalogue of 
things to be thankful for." 



295 



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